KillswitchEngage Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 Hey guys I'm hoping somebody can assist me with a small issue I've been having. I recently attempted to load Windows 7 RC onto my laptop and I thought it might be interesting to load it via a USB drive. I followed the instructions from one of the many guides on how to do it (http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-...-working-guide/) and eventually booted from the USB drive. After the Windows 7 installation finished, my USB drive refused to be picked up. I've tried the drive on a Windows XP machine, Windows 7 and even on Linux to no avail. The drive installs the driver (RW8021 Pendrive Driver) successfully however it fails to load the USB Mass Storage Device driver. Is there a way of recovering the drive at all? I've tried a couple of data recovery tools however they're quite pointless as the drive isn't even picked up in the Disk Management console. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redxine Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 According to the tutorial you would have had to format the drive before you began so any data you had on the drive would have been destroyed from this. I'm actually amazed that that tutorial didn't have a "NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED - BACKUP YOUR DATA" thing going on there. Throw it on your linux box and install/run gparted to delete the old partition and make a new one. Fdisk would work too. It should show up as a /dev/sd* device even if it has a bad partition on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Sierakowski Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 According to the tutorial you would have had to format the drive before you began so any data you had on the drive would have been destroyed from this. I'm actually amazed that that tutorial didn't have a "NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED - BACKUP YOUR DATA" thing going on there. Throw it on your linux box and install/run gparted to delete the old partition and make a new one. Fdisk would work too. It should show up as a /dev/sd* device even if it has a bad partition on it. Yep, there's no data on there anyway other then the win7 install. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted August 8, 2009 Share Posted August 8, 2009 That tutorial is a load of crap, all you need to do to get Windows 6.x installing from a USB stick is to gui quick format with FAT32 and then use diskpart to mark the partition as active. diskpart list disk select disk 2 (where disk 2 is your USB stick) select partition 1 active exit Then just drag/drop the ISO contents onto said drive. Job done. As for your USB stick, does the device or the partition fail to show under linux? If the device fails, it may have bought it, if the partition fails you might be able to work with it. However, USB sticks are cheap so no big deal either way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted August 9, 2009 Share Posted August 9, 2009 That tutorial is a load of crap, all you need to do to get Windows 6.x installing from a USB stick is to gui quick format with FAT32 and then use diskpart to mark the partition as active. Also, once you've marked the partition active, unless you mess with it, you shouldn't need to do it again on that same memory stick/card, so you can just replace the files in future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
555 Posted August 9, 2009 Share Posted August 9, 2009 That tutorial is a load of crap, all you need to do to get Windows 6.x installing from a USB stick is to gui quick format with FAT32 and then use diskpart to mark the partition as active. Then just drag/drop the ISO contents onto said drive. Job done. As for your USB stick, does the device or the partition fail to show under linux? If the device fails, it may have bought it, if the partition fails you might be able to work with it. However, USB sticks are cheap so no big deal either way. How would I create an image of my current windows xp, vista or 7 setup, then be able to use that image as a live usb, to boot from simular to how Back Track 3 boots from start, but windows instead? i just got a 16gb usb drive i would like to try it on and have crafted my computer to have all the apps i use w/ windows and kept it under 8gb, Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
numb3rs Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 It may be the way you setup the installer. Try this.... Download: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...120444&st=0 Go into RMPrepUSB and select clean USB drive. Hope that helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 How would I create an image of my current windows xp, vista or 7 setup, then be able to use that image as a live usb, to boot from simular to how Back Track 3 boots from start, but windows instead? i just got a 16gb usb drive i would like to try it on and have crafted my computer to have all the apps i use w/ windows and kept it under 8gb, Thanks Windows isn't going to be 100% happy with that setup, it will have driver issues and so forth. This is where linux excels. If your only going to use it on one machine, then you need to look at sysprep and imagex (build image, sysprep it, then use imagex to put it on flash, probally this won't work out the box though). If you want something you can keep in your bag and use whenever and whereever, then you need to take a look at VistaPE, or building your own WinPE 2 image with a custom shell. WinPE2 is designed for this,. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 it fails to load the USB Mass Storage Device driver. In that tutorial it looks like they flip the bit to make it both bootable and non-removable media. Maybe use diskaprt again to see if it can access the device, and maybe reformat it as fat32 or whatever. Might have to know what the bootsect command is to remove the boot sector bits and put it back to what it was originally as a removable drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
555 Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 Windows isn't going to be 100% happy with that setup, it will have driver issues and so forth. This is where linux excels. If your only going to use it on one machine, then you need to look at sysprep and imagex (build image, sysprep it, then use imagex to put it on flash, probally this won't work out the box though). If you want something you can keep in your bag and use whenever and whereever, then you need to take a look at VistaPE, or building your own WinPE 2 image with a custom shell. WinPE2 is designed for this,. Nice, so once I crate a .iso image of my harddrive useing WinPE2, or VistaPE, then I can format my USB drive to Fat32, and then mount the .iso image i created with WinPE2 to the Usb drive, and it will boot after that from the usb drive to the image i just created? Thanks for your help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 Nice, so once I crate a .iso image of my harddrive useing WinPE2, or VistaPE, then I can format my USB drive to Fat32, and then mount the .iso image i created with WinPE2 to the Usb drive, and it will boot after that from the usb drive to the image i just created? Thanks for your help! Wrong end of the wrong stick mate... What you would do is this: Build you install of Windows 7 Sysprep it boot from a WinPE2 usb stick with imagex included Use imagex to dump an image of the machine you setup to a USB drive (imagex uses WIM files) Then use imagex to apply that image on a partition on another USB stick, marking that partition as active Work out why its broken and repeat above until it works. (This may take some time and ultimately not work at all) WinPE 2 is Windows Pre-Install enviroment, which is a very basic, cut down Windows based OS designed for running things like installers or recovery tools. Its very flexible, so while it doesn't come with a GUI you can add a 3rd party one along with more tools, drivers etc. This will give you a bootable USB stick containing a Windows enviroment. VistaPE is just a pre-made version of this, which will save you time and generally be a lot easier to use for a newbie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Sierakowski Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 If you're looking for an easy bootable environment, you may want to consider something like puppy linux. It's whole point is to run off of a CD, so you can probably get your feet wet there first. http://www.puppylinux.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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