Creating an Ultimate Boot CD or Thumb Drive (Pen/Flash)
To get started here are the tools you need. I've supplied links to items you can get for free anything that doesn't have a link of course you should have a legal copy.
1.) Windows XP SP2 CD
2.) Barts PE Builder
3.) UBCD4WIN
4.) UBCD4WIN Drivers Pack 1.8 Final
5.) Windows 2003 Server Ramdrive files
6.) HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool
That's it, 6 items. Now to move on. First download BartPE Builder and install it, it will create a folder usually called pebuilder or similar depending on the version available, you can download a zipped version and create the pebuilder folder yourself and extract it there or use the installer or exe version. Once you have that installed now copy your XP SP2 CD to the hard drive this will save you errors later, call it whatever you like, example: c:\pebuilder\Win XP SP2 - this way everything is within one folder (Pebuilder).
Now create another folder called srsp1 in the root of pebuilder, example: c:\pebuilder\srsp1 and extract to this folder the Windows 2003 Server Ramdrive files. We'll come back to why these are needed later. These are NOT needed to create an Ultimate Boot CD but are needed for doing an Ultimate Boot USB Thumb Drive.
To build a default BartPE bootable CD then you can skip using any UBCD4WIN items. I'm going the extra mile here instead and giving you the Ultimate - who wants mediocre.
Now download the UBCD4WIN files and drivers and follow the instructions included as to how to install these, when clicking the exe files it tells you the path to choose for installation. Here is the simple lowdown on that. You will want to delete everything under the c:\pebuilder\plugin folder, leaving the plugin folder intact, then you'll extract the UBCD4WIN files to c:\pebuilder and it will auto install into the plugin folder. The UBCD4WIN 1.8 Drivers pack will be extracted to the c:\pebuilder\drivers folder.
Install the HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool - Well come back to this later also.
Now to create the UBCD4WIN you will run pebuilder.exe and agree and say NO to search for Source and on the top field you can click the button to the right and browse to your newly created c:\pebuilder\Win XP SP2 folder, everything else you can leave default, to enable or disable plugins you click this button on lower left and then highlight what you want or don't want and click the Enable/Disable button. Once this is done close back out to the main window and move the radio button to Create ISO. Now click Build and that's it and when it's complete make sure there are NO errors. That's it it's that easy to create and UBCD4WIN. Now use a burning program and burn your ISO image and you'll now have an ultimate boot CD. You can also if you are like me and use Firefox over Internet Explorer you can download the latest plugin 1.5.0.1 HERE. Under c:\pebuilder\plugin you can delete everything under the firefox folder and extract the .cab file into that folder.
Now to have even more fun lets create a bootable Pen/Flash Thumb drive. This is where those srsp1 (Windows 2003 Server Files) are needed. Now under the pebuilder folder are 3 files peusb.txt, peusb.cmd, and peusb.bin. If you can't follow my directions you can read the peusb.txt file and I've included everything in this Post so the hard work has already been done for you all.
If you haven't created an ISO yet and don't want an Ultimate Boot Disk but want to only do the Pen/Flash drive then you can do everything mentioned above but this time do not move the radio button to create an ISO image and leave it on NONE. You will have to remove many of the plugins by disabling them. This all depends on the size of your Pen/Flash drive. As an example I used a 256 MB Thumb drive and removed all the plugins except Firefox, I installed Ghost (Need a legal copy for this plugin), and left many of the smaller items, but I might add very few plugins can be used with such a small thumb drive. Size does matter here, you can test by toying around until you don't receive errors during the running of peusb. The larger your Pen/Flash drive the more you can have enabled. If you have a 1 Gig or higher thumb drive you can leave everything enabled.
Take your thumb, pen, flash drive and plug into your USB of your computer and note what drive letter it becomes. Now with the HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool you installed earlier run it and it should automatically find your Pen drive and you can choose how to format it - this is the part you MUST do. Format the Pen/Flash drive as FAT...
Run pebuilder so that it creates the BartPE folder with what plugins you wanted but this time it will not create an ISO image, just the folder - upon every run it auto deletes this folder and recreates it.
Now open up a command prompt to c:\pebuilder and here you type peusb -f(Drive Letter:) without the parenthesis and replace Drive Letter with the drive letter your Pen/Flash drive currently is. Watch for errors. If you don't run out of space or receive errors it should come back and state you are good to go.
Now there is a catch to having a BOOTABLE Pen/Flash Drive. First is having it formatted as FAT and second is that your computer has an option in BIOS to allow for booting off USB Devices. Not all computers, especially older ones are able to do this. This will need to be enabled or set within bios before it will work period.
Now here is another tidbit of information so that when you want to create say a CD instead but don't want to create coasters and want to test that it will boot and that it actually works. You will need to download another tool and save a web page as a favorite.
Here we go onto this other item that can be very useful especially for bootable ISO Images, not just a BartPE or UBCD4WIN bootable ISO or CD - example: Vista DVD.
1.) VMWare Player
2.) VMX Builder Page
Install VMWare Player. Now go out to VMX Builder Page and do this.
You can search for software based vmx builders but this page is actually very easy. Only issue is when you run the vmx file from the latest vmware player it will report that it's an outdated vmx file do you want to upgrade just say YES. Ok now back to the subject. Once at the vmx builder page you'll see where you can give it a name, name it anything you want. Now for Guest OS since you are using Win XP SP2 with your pebuilder.iso choose XP Pro from the drop down and only choose about a quarter or half of the amount of RAM you have on your system. Now you can enable USB by checking the box and check other items you'd like but the key is to pick IDE0:Master and for file name type c:\pebuilder\pebuilder.iso or where ever you saved your iso image to when built with pebuilder and of course the name you gave it. Next choose Device Type drop down to cdrom-image and check the box Start Connected. If you want network you can choose those also. Next - once everything is set up. Go to the upper Right hand side of the page and choose or click Generate VMX File, on the next page will be a bunch of text within a window. Right Click in Windows and choose Select All and Copy this text and Paste this into a text document and save it, but change the extension from .txt to .vmx.
Now you can open up VMWare Player and point it to your newly created .vmx file and it should boot up your pebuilder.iso image file or whatever iso image file you create and pointed to in the vmx file (If it's bootable) and bingo you now can test before you burn coasters. You can edit this same file and just change the path or file name whenever you create other bootable iso files or ones you may download. Thought I'd let you in on this extra little secret as well.
Well I hope you enjoy building your first BartPE CD or UBCD4WIN or even what I call the UBUSB4WIN. I also hope you enjoy the secret iso test items such as vmware player and builder.
1.) Windows XP SP2 CD
2.) Barts PE Builder
3.) UBCD4WIN
4.) UBCD4WIN Drivers Pack 1.8 Final
5.) Windows 2003 Server Ramdrive files
6.) HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool
That's it, 6 items. Now to move on. First download BartPE Builder and install it, it will create a folder usually called pebuilder or similar depending on the version available, you can download a zipped version and create the pebuilder folder yourself and extract it there or use the installer or exe version. Once you have that installed now copy your XP SP2 CD to the hard drive this will save you errors later, call it whatever you like, example: c:\pebuilder\Win XP SP2 - this way everything is within one folder (Pebuilder).
Now create another folder called srsp1 in the root of pebuilder, example: c:\pebuilder\srsp1 and extract to this folder the Windows 2003 Server Ramdrive files. We'll come back to why these are needed later. These are NOT needed to create an Ultimate Boot CD but are needed for doing an Ultimate Boot USB Thumb Drive.
To build a default BartPE bootable CD then you can skip using any UBCD4WIN items. I'm going the extra mile here instead and giving you the Ultimate - who wants mediocre.
Now download the UBCD4WIN files and drivers and follow the instructions included as to how to install these, when clicking the exe files it tells you the path to choose for installation. Here is the simple lowdown on that. You will want to delete everything under the c:\pebuilder\plugin folder, leaving the plugin folder intact, then you'll extract the UBCD4WIN files to c:\pebuilder and it will auto install into the plugin folder. The UBCD4WIN 1.8 Drivers pack will be extracted to the c:\pebuilder\drivers folder.
Install the HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool - Well come back to this later also.
Now to create the UBCD4WIN you will run pebuilder.exe and agree and say NO to search for Source and on the top field you can click the button to the right and browse to your newly created c:\pebuilder\Win XP SP2 folder, everything else you can leave default, to enable or disable plugins you click this button on lower left and then highlight what you want or don't want and click the Enable/Disable button. Once this is done close back out to the main window and move the radio button to Create ISO. Now click Build and that's it and when it's complete make sure there are NO errors. That's it it's that easy to create and UBCD4WIN. Now use a burning program and burn your ISO image and you'll now have an ultimate boot CD. You can also if you are like me and use Firefox over Internet Explorer you can download the latest plugin 1.5.0.1 HERE. Under c:\pebuilder\plugin you can delete everything under the firefox folder and extract the .cab file into that folder.
Now to have even more fun lets create a bootable Pen/Flash Thumb drive. This is where those srsp1 (Windows 2003 Server Files) are needed. Now under the pebuilder folder are 3 files peusb.txt, peusb.cmd, and peusb.bin. If you can't follow my directions you can read the peusb.txt file and I've included everything in this Post so the hard work has already been done for you all.
If you haven't created an ISO yet and don't want an Ultimate Boot Disk but want to only do the Pen/Flash drive then you can do everything mentioned above but this time do not move the radio button to create an ISO image and leave it on NONE. You will have to remove many of the plugins by disabling them. This all depends on the size of your Pen/Flash drive. As an example I used a 256 MB Thumb drive and removed all the plugins except Firefox, I installed Ghost (Need a legal copy for this plugin), and left many of the smaller items, but I might add very few plugins can be used with such a small thumb drive. Size does matter here, you can test by toying around until you don't receive errors during the running of peusb. The larger your Pen/Flash drive the more you can have enabled. If you have a 1 Gig or higher thumb drive you can leave everything enabled.
Take your thumb, pen, flash drive and plug into your USB of your computer and note what drive letter it becomes. Now with the HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool you installed earlier run it and it should automatically find your Pen drive and you can choose how to format it - this is the part you MUST do. Format the Pen/Flash drive as FAT...
Run pebuilder so that it creates the BartPE folder with what plugins you wanted but this time it will not create an ISO image, just the folder - upon every run it auto deletes this folder and recreates it.
Now open up a command prompt to c:\pebuilder and here you type peusb -f
Now there is a catch to having a BOOTABLE Pen/Flash Drive. First is having it formatted as FAT and second is that your computer has an option in BIOS to allow for booting off USB Devices. Not all computers, especially older ones are able to do this. This will need to be enabled or set within bios before it will work period.
Now here is another tidbit of information so that when you want to create say a CD instead but don't want to create coasters and want to test that it will boot and that it actually works. You will need to download another tool and save a web page as a favorite.
Here we go onto this other item that can be very useful especially for bootable ISO Images, not just a BartPE or UBCD4WIN bootable ISO or CD - example: Vista DVD.
1.) VMWare Player
2.) VMX Builder Page
Install VMWare Player. Now go out to VMX Builder Page and do this.
You can search for software based vmx builders but this page is actually very easy. Only issue is when you run the vmx file from the latest vmware player it will report that it's an outdated vmx file do you want to upgrade just say YES. Ok now back to the subject. Once at the vmx builder page you'll see where you can give it a name, name it anything you want. Now for Guest OS since you are using Win XP SP2 with your pebuilder.iso choose XP Pro from the drop down and only choose about a quarter or half of the amount of RAM you have on your system. Now you can enable USB by checking the box and check other items you'd like but the key is to pick IDE0:Master and for file name type c:\pebuilder\pebuilder.iso or where ever you saved your iso image to when built with pebuilder and of course the name you gave it. Next choose Device Type drop down to cdrom-image and check the box Start Connected. If you want network you can choose those also. Next - once everything is set up. Go to the upper Right hand side of the page and choose or click Generate VMX File, on the next page will be a bunch of text within a window. Right Click in Windows and choose Select All and Copy this text and Paste this into a text document and save it, but change the extension from .txt to .vmx.
Now you can open up VMWare Player and point it to your newly created .vmx file and it should boot up your pebuilder.iso image file or whatever iso image file you create and pointed to in the vmx file (If it's bootable) and bingo you now can test before you burn coasters. You can edit this same file and just change the path or file name whenever you create other bootable iso files or ones you may download. Thought I'd let you in on this extra little secret as well.
Well I hope you enjoy building your first BartPE CD or UBCD4WIN or even what I call the UBUSB4WIN. I also hope you enjoy the secret iso test items such as vmware player and builder.
posted by Cellar Dweller at 4:38 PM
2 Comments:
Great post, thanks for taking the time to explain how to get this working :o)
I've a question before I begin though..
I've got an 8GB USB Pen Drive, and while I'd like to have it bootable into UBUSB4Win, I'd also like to use the remaining space as a normal FAT32 Pen Drive - so if I plug it into a running system I can read+write files to it. Does this work or is the whole USB stick 'lost' to the Boot image?
Many thanks,
Andrew :o)
That's actually a good question. I really do not know the answer definitively.
Of course this post is quite old and there is a newer process that I have yet to test or try but you could probably find at the UBCD4WIN site.
I think they changed the creation process or batch files.
Now in my opinion I think that what you are asking is fine, it will be still bootable and I think you can still add to it the way you'd like without issue.
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