bootable usb memory key ? 1

[tdebrabandere]

Hello,

I made a Dell usb memory key bootable thanks to

http://www.memorykeytools.com

My problem is that the bios sees the key as a hard drive and gives to it a drive letter C

Any idea how I can change the drive letter to A ?

Many thanks in advance
Thierry

 

[bcastner]

right-click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management, highlight the device, and use Tools to change the drive letter.

 

[tdebrabandere]

thanks but the OS is not Windows but DOS
I need to boot in order to start the windows installation
and I need the drive letter to be A because I have a script difficult to adapt

 

[bcastner]

Use the external DOS command SUBST as the first line in autoexec.bat.
You will need depending on DOS version to copy the subst.exe file to the USB device.

subst a: c:
Last line of your setup routine script:

subst a: /d

 

[tdebrabandere]

thanks for that
I forget to say that my script will format the drive C
with a subst command, both A and C letters will point to the USB key
I would need a solution to swap the drive letters ...

 

[bcastner]

Hold on there.

Is this a RIS script?

If not, I am assuming that you are going this tortuous route because you do not have a CD Drive? Is this correct?

Essentially you want to do a LAN install of Windows? Is this correct?

 

[tdebrabandere]

it is a in house written script to do a LAN install
(3 partitions, formatting, NT4 installation, patches and additionnal software installations)

 

[bcastner]

Okay, it is a lot clearer to me now.

I think you have a couple of things on your side. One is that NT (or most Windows OS for that matter) will not install to a removable volume unless tricked into it. As long as the Dell utility did not change the very low level information about the drive type, and I doubt it bothered, you should be okay. NT is not going to try and install to it. Also, FDISK will not try to partition it for the same reason, and FORMAT would simply fail if misguided enough to try.

I think this will work:

. Change the boot order in the BIOS if you used it, so that the USB device is third in the chain of boot devices, after the floppy disk and all the hard disk(s).

. The script you run likely fdisks away any existing partition on the hard disk drive. But to use the USB device you need to make certain it is not a bare drive. It should have a single partition set as primary, active and bootable. It likely has that already. But it should not be formatted with system files to make it bootable, unless your F12 function key works at startup to allow the choice of a temporary boot device. In that case it does not matter if the system can boot from the drive or not.

. When you start the machine hit F12, if possible and select the USB device. It's drive letter assignment will be at least one letter higher than the partitions on the hard disk(s) in the system at present.

The only time that it would recieve a drive letter C assignment is if you changed in BIOS the boot order to list the USB device higher than the hard disk devices on your system in boot order.

. If F12 does not work it does not matter as long as the hard disk drive(s) in your system do not initiate the boot sequence. They will not if there are no system files on them to boot from. When the BIOS chain hits the hard disk drives they will find no boot routines to load and move down the device chain you specified earlier. But the drive letter assignment changes as this process occurs, and the drive should report back to both DOS (and Windows if it mattered) that the boot device is natively located on the physical device chain at least at position 3 (0 &1 are reserved for the floppies; 2 for the first hard drive, but not reserved; 3 for the next device, etc..

With the small changes listed in BIOS at the top, try the script, it cannot hurt anything. You certainly are not going to cause a remote fdisk or format session across the
network.

The worst that can happen is that the script does not succeed, but I would give a much greater than even probability that it will work, and an even high probability if the F12 function key is operable.

 

[tdebrabandere]

many thanks