ISO boot from FAT/NTFS/USB (GRUB.exe, grldr from boot.ini)

**j2m2t2** · 12-30-2004, 12:00 AM

I just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work that went into making this possible. I am now running Knoppix from an ISO on my hard drive after booting from a USB key. AWESOME

**Harry Kuhman** · 12-30-2004, 02:24 AM

Originally Posted by j2m2t2

after booting from a USB key. AWESOME

Please share, what did you have to do to make your USB flash drive bootable? I have several USB flash drives, but so far have not been able to make any of them bootable (my BIOS does have a "boot from USB" option and I have made that the first choice, but no luck so far).

**Alterscape** · 12-31-2004, 02:43 AM

Will Giles' GRUB-from-NTFS work if the boot partition isn't C:\ ? My system boots from H:\ (hda3). I tried using the line h:\grubldr="GRUB" in my boot.ini, but it didn't work.. got the line about Windows having trouble accessing the specified boot device. How could I alter the provided files to make it fly from the H drive?

**j.drake** · 12-31-2004, 06:52 AM

I haven't tried what you are describing, but I seem to recall hearing that you can boot from an image loaded elsewhere. I think that the Grub files need to be in the root directory of the partition where the boot.ini file is located, but his solution can boot Knoppix from wherever you want to put it.

I think your first steps are to find out what linux and Grub think your H: drive is, and change the references accordingly. Remember that 0 in Grub is the first, whether that be a drive or a partition. So, for example, if linux calls your H: drive hdb5, meaning the 5th (numerically) partition in the second drive, Grub would call it hd(1,4).

Can you give some more specifics about the way your drives fit the linux drive conventions, and where your boot.ini and Knoppix files are located? It would be easier for people to help if they could refer to specific locations, rather than speaking in vague generalities.

jd

**ruymbeke** · 12-31-2004, 07:48 AM

Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

Originally Posted by j2m2t2

after booting from a USB key. AWESOME

Please share, what did you have to do to make your USB flash drive bootable? I have several USB flash drives, but so far have not been able to make any of them bootable (my BIOS does have a "boot from USB" option and I have made that the first choice, but no luck so far).

I found a program called HPUSBFW.EXE (included in the Root_Of_USB directory of my grubd.zip) which sadly only runs on XP but works great to reformat and make USB dongles bootable. You may also need an other bootable device to copy the dos boot files from and then update you USB dongle with my boot files. Good luck and let me know...
Happy Holidays, Gilles

PS: Do you have any idea of what is going on with the wiki documentation page ? It has been down for months now...

**Harry Kuhman** · 12-31-2004, 08:06 AM

Originally Posted by ruymbeke

Good luck and let me know...

PS: Do you have any idea of what is going on with the wiki documentation page ? It has been down for months now...

Thanks. I'm downloading your stuff now, but am dead on my feet and ready to crash, will play with it tomorrow or the next day and will let you know.

according to inormation at this link, eadz felt he had to take the old wiki down because of very serious security problems in the php code. He and a couple of volunteers are reformatting the current information for the new wiki. I assume the new stuff is just not ready yet. You might want to see if eadz needs more help if you have some time to offer.

**Alterscape** · 12-31-2004, 09:23 AM

JD,
Sorry for the uninformative first post -- Standard Newbie In A Hurry syndrome, I suppose. Anyway, okay, here's my system's hdd layout.

hda1: 18gb ext3 Linux partition, Knoppix installed, Debian-style, here.
hda2: 2gb Linux Swap
hda3: 20gb NTFS XP System partition (h

hdb1: 80gb NTFS data partition. (c

boot.ini and the GRUB files are located on hda3 -- hd(0,2) in GRUB-speak, I think, h:\ in Windows-speak. I want to load GRUB from the NT bootloader, and then use Grub to boot knoppix..

**ruymbeke** · 12-31-2004, 09:44 AM

Originally Posted by Alterscape

...boot.ini and the GRUB files are located on hda3 -- hd(0,2) in GRUB-speak, I think, h:\ in Windows-speak. I want to load GRUB from the NT bootloader, and then use Grub to boot knoppix..

Could you please post your current boot.ini ?
Did you actually try: c:\grldr="Start Grub" and c:\bootgrub="Start Grub (old method)" ?
XP may do the letter swapping thing after having booted, so you may still want to try c:/
Cheers, Gilles

**Alterscape** · 12-31-2004, 10:56 AM

h:\boot.ini

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
H:\grldr="Start Grub"

I should try the "old grub loader" method, but I haven't yet.

[edit]
Okay, I moved everything from Giles' zip to my C drive and made the requisite changes to boot.ini (c:\grldr="start grub", and on the next line, c:\bootgrub="old GRUB") .. I think something's working right-er, because when I use the grldr entry in the boot menu, I get the ever-informative "ERROR" message. Using the bootgrub entry, I get the error "can't find grldr." I'm going to mess with my menu.lst and see if maybe I can fix the error.

[edit]
Okay, I think there's something strange going on here. After I deleted the grub files from H (hda3) drive and rebooted (thinking that having put the files on C, hdb1, would make it happy, I started getting the same Windows-related errors as before)... so I moved the grub files back go hda3, but left the boot.ini reading c:\ .. which gets me the "ERROR" message (which smells to me like GRUB rather than Windows, since I've never seen that particular error on boot before..) .. I'm not sure if any of this info is useful, but there you have it.

**Harry Kuhman** · 01-01-2005, 06:03 AM

Originally Posted by ruymbeke

[Good luck and let me know...

Well, no joy so far. At first I had the wrong file (grobc.zip rather than grubd.zip). Once I figured that out I got the right file and found the utility you spoke of. Put it on my XP system and used it to reformat my USB flash drive. No luck. Did it again, this time giving the program a win98 boot floppy I have that it could install a system from. It copied some stuff from the floppy duing the format this time (including command.com and two .sys files), but on a reboot the Xp system on the hard drive still comes up. So I'm still trying to figure out how to make a USB flash drive boot on my notebook.

Perhaps j2m2t2 will still share what he did to get his working.