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Problem: A USB stick cannot boot with any of Porteus, the boot-repair LiveUSB, or SystemRescueCD. It used to be bootable with Porteus, and before that it could boot with other Linux LiveUSB distributions.

Solution: Ventoy

/tag/liveusb-software

Table of Contents [hide]

1 Workaround
2 Things which failed
- 2.1 flagging the partition as bootable
3 Notes
4 To do

Workaround ∞

A heretofore unknown grub bootloader USB, Super Grub2 Disk, was dded onto a stick, and works to chain-load a secondary drive which has its own bootloader.

Perhaps if I could use it for USB stick preparation I could then install another distribution overtop of it.

After using Super Grub2 Disk, putting Slackware 14.2 on it worked just fine.

Putting Porteus on it worked once but I hard powered-off in the start of my first bootup and thereafter could not get the thing to work.

Fucking fuckity fuck fuck.

Things which failed ∞

LiLi USB Creator
UNetbootin
In Linux
- Deleting the partition
- Creating the partition slightly smaller than maximum.
- Using various methods.
- This worked with one other stick..
In Git on Windows
- \dd bs=4M if=/dev/zero of=/dev/STICK
  Perhaps alternately I could have used one of the programs in Testing USB storage which wipes a drive to test it..
- Format it in Windows
- Then LiLi USB Creator (Windows) with SystemRescueCD 4.8.3 x86
- It takes forever to write the MBR, is it copying the files at that time?

Strangely, my original single working stick didn't boot until I completely powered off my machine and started back up again, so there's something else going on. Future testing has to include this complete power down.

flagging the partition as bootable ∞

I'm not sure at what point I tried this, probably after farting around with partitioning in Linux but before zeroing it and formatting.

What is it that makes some USB sticks not-bootable?

How to Create a Bootable USB Drive Without Using Any Software

Let us assume that the flash / USB drive is the D: drive and the DVD installer located on drive F :. The first step, we will navigate Command Prompt to set installation DVD as its active directory.

By default, Command Prompt's active directory for Administrator permission is on C:\Windows\System32> . We will navigate Command Prompt to set on DVD (F:) as its active directory. Just type f: then hit Enter, and the active directory changed to F:.
Type cd boot and hit enter. Active directory changed to F:\boot> .
Type bootsect /nt60 d: and hit enter. Creating boot sector on D: drive (USB flash drive).
Type exit and hit enter to close the Command Prompt. Until this step we have made a bootable USB drive sucessfully, and the flash drive is ready to be used as a boot media.

Notes ∞

To do ∞

Rufus worked with Devuan 2.0.0 i386 -minimal and -desktop
List of tools to create Live USB systems
Booting multiple distributions from a USB stick
- MultiBootUSB
Try one of the Plop Boot Managers
https://superuser.com/questions/391176/flipping-the-removable-media-bit-alternatives-to-bootit
https://www.getusb.info/flip-your-bit-usb-utility-to-make-local-drive/
- BootIt
- Sketchy, not found on https://web.archive.org/web/20171122083951/http://www.lexar.com:80/support/downloads.html

TODO:

https://etcher.balena.io/ [ 1 ]
- https://github.com/balena-io/etcher

Last updated 2024-07-21 at 05:49:42

Footnotes

etcher.io is a redirect, was https://www.balena.io/etcher [ ↩ ]

spiralofhope

Making a USB stick bootable