The Genius Drive Revamp Project

(OR Creating a VistaPE USB bootable thumb drive with PGP by Varun Tansuwan)

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IX. Creating ISO/USB Drive

a. ISO Burning

Generally what I suggest doing here if this has been built under a Virtual PC is to now transfer the iso file out through the network share if you’re burning an iso file. Use your favorite ISO burning software Roxio/Nero/Sonic etc. I suggest imgburn from www.imgburn.com if you need a tool. Beware the false download links.

b. Creating a USB Thumb Drive/Hard Drive

Note:  Once the drive is done, it may or may not boot in your machine. Newer computers tend to boot better with USB thumb drive or hard drive.
For people doing the development under a Virtual Machine environment. If you’re creating a USB thumb drive or hard drive though I suggest copying the ENTIRE c:\Winbuilder076 folder out (may want to use Zip with store only no compression to get past Anti-virus scanning slowdowns/false positives). And then running it under the native OS. If you're doing this already natively then skip to the next line you don't need to copy anything out.

1. To start with obtain a sufficiently large Thumbdrive or USB Hard drive (suggest 2 gigs minimum but 8-64 gigs is probably better, and it should already have a primary partition about 1 gig or so at the very front of it, if not create one using Disk Management, you can use Section IX. C, Part A - Step A2. down below to help guide through this, except you'll be creating a 1st primary partition and not a 2nd one, and you can go ahead and format it FAT32).

Be sure you’re willing to lose ALL data on this drive.


If you are using a USB Hard drive skip to step #2. If you are using a USB Thumb drive you should use one of the tools here http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=87993&st=17 to format the drive to prep it properly 

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7739
I suggest this tool RMPrepUSB. If you're using Windows Vista/Windows 7, be sure to run this as Administrator (thanks Jaclaz!)

i. First clean the drive of all partitions. Use the Boot Option\CLEAN USB drive (erase USB drive partitions) and then hit Prepare Drive. You'll get some warning messages just hit OK then OK again until it wipes the drive. 

RMPrepUSB

ii. Safely eject the drive then put it back. Then prep it for VistaPE, set the Filesystem for FAT32 or NTFS. Set the Size (1 gig or more suggested, 980 used here for later OS/X dual-boot integration purposes), set the Volume Label. Uncheck Boot as HDD (2PTNS). Select WinPE/Vista v2 bootable and click Prepare Drive. Click OK, OK then it should be ready.

rmprepusb2

2. Open My Computer then right click and choose Format the drive using FAT32. (PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE RIGHT ONE!) They say you can use NTFS, but I stick with FAT32 for compatibility issues such as MacOS files etc. (see figure for step 3), if you formatted using RMPrepUSB you can skip to 4.

Note: On FAT32 you’re limited to 4 gig max file size if you’re doing large file transfers/backups. No single file can be any larger than 4 gigabytes. So no huge ghost or dvd images for instance.

3. Quick format is fine. If you’re using a U2/U3 enabled flash drive like the Sandisk Cruzer’s then you will have to use their utility to remove this feature first then format. (or alternatively if you have a U3 drive that boots an iso image file you can replace the .iso file that it boots u3Custom.iso or something, with the VistaPE-Core.iso file and have it boot that instead, thanks to Jaclaz for this suggestion http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=121502&hl= for more detail). Go ahead and quick format. Capacity can be larger or smaller as you need. I suggest a minimum of 1 gig though. Go ahead and hit Start then OK to format it. Hit Ok when done formatting the Close.


Format GD Format GD OK
 
4. Return to Winbuilder and goto Finalize\Create ISO/CD/USB and where it says Please select the root directory of your USB-Device use the folder button to select the correct drive letter.

Select GD 

5. On the Browse for Folder dialog window hit OK then on the Information window hit OK again (don’t worry it’s not going to format it again and we can ignore the error message about Windows cannot find “D:\WinbuilderBLAHBLAHBLAH\HPUSBFW.exe”

Select GD1 Select GD2


6. Once you hit ok it will start to copy the files from the c:\Winbuilder076\Target folder

 GD Copy

7. Grub4Dos installing – Here again be sure to select the correct disk. Selecting the wrong disk will result in problems (especially if you choose the primary OS’s active boot drive). And again I can’t stress this enough.

BE SURE TO SELECT THE CORRECT DRIVE!

Then hit the Install Button and voila you now have the bootloader installed. And if you’re adventurous you can try tweaking chainloads etc. and add more tools like the XP Recover Disk, DBAN, Parted Magic, other LiveOS’s etc. If you encounter problems installing the Grub4Dos, you may have to use "--skip-mbr-test" (remove quotes) in the Options\Extra field.
 
InstallGrub4Dos           

c. Extra Credit – Super Duper Bonus Points! – So you want to dual boot Mac OS/X?

Requirements: This requires a USB Hard drive to consolidate as Windows refuses to multi-partition or recognize past the 1st partition for Flash drives typically (or if you have a USB thumb drive with the removable bit set to off). This assumes you already have a OS/X bootable thumb drive with 10.5.2+ (might work with 10.5/10.5.1 but haven’t tested) and a USB Hard drive with a bootable/working VistaPE or other WinPE based USB bootable files. I suggest 8 gigs or better hard drive and I suggest 16 gigs minimum. This will allow for expansion to future OS’s like Windows 7 and also allow you to run updates on OS/X without having to reimage every time due to space constraints. For 16 gigs I suggest 4 gigs to PC side and 12 gigs to Mac side. If you have only an 8 gig drive, I suggest 1 gig to PC and 7 gigs to Mac side.

Part A. Under a Windows XP/Vista/7 box (note these instructions are for Windows Vista/Windows 7, but XP is similar, just that it is creating a New Partition instead of Simple Volume)

Step A1) First backup your working WinPE/PE2/PE3/VistaPE drive with Ghost11, be sure to ghost using the –ib switch to preserve the boot sector.

What we're doing here: Creating a 2nd primary partition big enough for your MacOSX bootable thumb drive to be restored onto 7 gigs minimum or better. However if this is a small drive I suggest not using all the available remaining space so that this image can be used to image other drives. Not all 8 gig thumb drives have the same space. So I usually buffer my numbers by about 50-100 megabytes of gap space at the end.

Step A2) Open Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management and then goto Storage then Disk Management.

Disk Manager

Step A3) Right click on the unallocated space or partition you want to use and choose Create New Simple Volume (in XP this is Create New Partition)

Step A4) Hit next then set the Simple Volume Size. I chose 6659 megs here, hit Next again.

New Simple Volume 1 New Simple Volume 2

Step A5) Assign a drive letter, doesn't really matter here, hit Next. Select "Do not format this volume". Leave it raw or you may have trouble formatting it in Disk Utility later. Hit Next again.

New Simple Volume 3 New Simple Volume 4

Step A6) Click Finish.

Finish New SImple Volume Wizard

Note: Autoplay may ask you to format this volume. Do not format it leave it a raw partition.

Step A7) Eject the drive safely

Part B. On an Intel Mac running Leopard (10.5.6 is what I used)

Step B1) Attach the drive to the Mac running Leopard.

Step B2) Go to Applications then Utilities then open Disk Utility.

DiskUtility1

Step B3) Use the Erase Tab to format the 2nd primary partition as OSX Extended (Journaled). You can label the drive here as well.

DiskUtility2

There will be a confirmation dialog. Verify things are correct then hit Erase.

DiskUtility3

Step B4) Use Disk Utility's Restore command to restore the files from the Leopard only volume to the newly formatted partition (this can be done with a premade .dmg source file instead if desired). Make sure that "Erase Destination" is NOT checked.

Note: This will convert the GPT OS/X to a MBR OS/X. Also this process screws up the MBR. Don't worry, it will be fixed in Step C2.

DiskUtility4

There will be a confirmation dialog. Verify things are correct then hit the Restore button.

DiskUtility5

Step B5) Eject the volumes from the Mac.

Note: At this point Grub4DosInstall won't work because it detects a broken/corrupt MBR. The below steps will fix this and allow Grub4DosInstall to work again.

Part C. Back to the Windows XP/Vista/7 box.

Step C1) Re-attach drive to PC.

Step C2) open a command prompt (cmd.exe, in vista/win7 might have to open in admin mode) use 'diskpart'

Step C3) use 'list disk' to get a listing of all disks.

Step C4) use 'select disk X' where X= the drive number desired.

DiskPart1

Step C5) use 'list partition' to get a listing of all partitions.

DiskPart2

Step C6) use 'select partition X' where X= the 980 meg partition. (unless you created yours as  a different size)

Step C7) use 'active' to set the partition active.

DiskPart3

Step C8) use 'exit' to quit diskpart.

Step C9) Eject the drive safely.

Note: Another option is to run once more through the steps (the part where grubinst occurs will fix it) from the Chapter IX. section b. Creating a USB Thumb Drive/Hard  Drive.

Part D. Follow-through

Step D1) Test both PC and Mac sides. Ensure both boot sucessfully. I suggest one time on PC, once on Mac, once again on PC, once on Mac again. Or reverse order. But it's best to test twice to ensure the drive is successful.

Step D2) Cleanup:
Step D3) Once the drive is set, attach it to the PC again and Ghost it using the -ib switch.

Step D4) This new image can now be used using Ghost and Disk from Image. If you have more space the Windows side can expand it.

Note: To upgrade the Leopard image the MacOS partition must have 1.4 gigs free to install the combo 10.5.6 update

WARNING: Test the image for integrity after creating it also test restoring it to another USB drive. If the restore of the image indicates that the Mac partition's new size doesn't match the old size chances are very good that it will fail to restore properly. You probably will have to reimage the device completely by deleting all partitions in Disk manager then redoing it from top steps. Partition as before then restore mac image then use winbuilder to inject VistaPE onto the front PC partition. After this side-by-side upgrading should be possible but if the condition of mac partition restore size new != old pops up again get ready to redo it again.

Forward to X. General Usage - Instructions

Back to VIII. Minor Customization

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Last Update 07-28-2009