booting a USB flash drive

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:50:56 GMT, Z.K. wrote:

Dean wrote:
On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:16:18 GMT, Z.K. wrote:

I have been trying to boot a 256M flash drive that I have and I am
having trouble. So, I am wondering if it is my flash drive itself or
something to do with my motherboard.

I followed the examples I found on the web in how to load linux on a USB
drive and make it bootable. I used HP's USB formatting tool to format
the USB drive then I extracted dsl.zip (damn small linux) to the the USB
drive and extracted syslinux to a directory on hard drive and ran the
command: syslinux -f h: (H is my USB flash drive). This is supposed to
make it bootable.

I then set the first boot device to USB ZIP and USD HDD, but neither
would cause the USB flash drive to boot. Is there something else I need
to do or do I need to buy a newer USB flash drive?

Z.K.

I have a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P and have not been successful booting from USB
flash either.
I know I have the flash drive correctly formatted for booting as I have
successfully booted from it on another PC.

On the GA-P35 I have selected the various USB device types from the F9 boot
menu. It hasn't worked. It doesn't appear to attempt to read the device at
all. So I feel it is a BIOS issue rather than set up of the pen drive.
Either me setting up BIOS incorrectly, failing to select correct device or
the BIOS doesn't can't in fact boot from a device connected to the USB.

None of the BIOS updates mention addressing a possible USB boot problem so I
haven't tried updating it.

If you do succeed I'd be interested to know what you did.


Okay, well I finally was able to get my USB drive to work. I have
listed the steps below that worked for me.

1) Downloaded the HP USB BOOT FORMAT Utility as well as the Win98 files
needed to boot the USB device. These files are available he
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

2) Now Format your USB Flash Drive, telling it to make it bootable and
point it to the Windows 98 directory that you created.

3) Now you need a version of Linux or some other OS that will fit on a
USB drive. Some versions are available he http://www.pendrivelinux.com/.

4) Unzip the Linux version to the USB drive.

5) Now, Download syslinux and extract it to a folder on your hard drive.
Version 3.36 is available he
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/01...n-one-usb-dsl/

6) Now in a command box or DOS box go to the directory where you
extracted syslinux and cd to the Win32 directory.

7) Type the command syslinux -f h: (h: is the drive letter for you USB
Flash drive).

8) Reboot your PC and go into the BIOS making sure your USB Flash drive
is still attached. For the first boot device choose USB ZIP though you
may need to try USB HDD.

9) Now go to the BIOS setting for HDD priority and make sure you choose
your USB Flash Drive for the first device and which should now be listed
in the menu.

10) Save the BIOS settings and reboot. The USB drive should now boot
into the Linux Operating System.


Hopefully, this works for you Dean, it did for me.

Z.K.

Thanks ZK for the Howto.