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Creating a multiboot USB drive Introduction 1 Part one: prepare the USB drive 2

Creating a multiboot USB drive Introduction 1 Part one: prepare the USB drive 2 Part two: prepare the Windows Vista/2008 installation images 6 Part three: using WinSetupFromUSB to create the bootable USB drive 14 Part four: adding boot options & modify Grub4DOS menu 19 Introduction One of the more frustrating downsides to the recent rise in popularity of netbooks is the difficulty in installing an operating system without an optical drive. The traditional way around this issue was to do a network install, using something like Microsoft's Remote Installation Services or Windows Deployment Services, which is fine if you have the infrastructure already in place, but overkill for the average user - having to set up a domain and then create images is a lengthy process if all you want to do is install Windows on your new computer. One of the most popular solutions for this increasingly common issue is to install from a USB flash memory drive. There are applications readily available on the Internet that will take your standard USB flash memory drive and turn it into a bootable drive from which you can install Windows. This got me thinking; wouldn't it be great to have a USB drive with all the versions of Windows that you install regularly? A quick search on google yielded some helpful but incomplete instructions on how to achieve this, but fortunately after many days of tweaking, I have been able to create a USB drive with the following operating systems; Windows XP Professional x86 with SP3 Windows XP Professional x64 with SP2 Windows Vista Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate and Enterprise x86 with SP1 Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate and Enterprise x64 with SP1 Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter full and Server Core x86 and x64 Which, by my count, is 13 client and 12 server operating systems, all installable from a single 8GB USB flash drive. With some further research and modification of the method, I was also able to create a bootable USB hard disk drive with the above, as well as a number of additional utilities including; Acronis True Image Server memtest GParted WinPE, Ultimate Boot CD BartPE This is an extremely powerful tool, especially to the IT professional who has to work on a range of systems that may not have working optical drives, or simply doesn't want to carry 10+ discs around with them at all times. Over the next few posts, I will give instructions on how to create these bootable USB drives. The majority of these instructions come from various sources on the Internet, mainly the forums at msfn.org. I will list the sources I used as I go along, although I apologise in advance if I do not credit somebody for their work - I do not recall where I got all of the information from. So, that's the preamble and scenario dealt with; onto the guide! Part one: prepare the USB drive Essential items & software for this step: A USB drive (either flash memory or external hard drive - either will work) large enough to hold your OS installers and/or tools. In this example, I am going to use a 4GB flash drive. The HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - available from here and various other sources on the Internet. Time - at least 15 minutes for this step There are certain things you must do to prepare your USB drive for booting. The first is to format it correctly, and the method to do this varies depending on the type of drive you are using. If you are using a flash memory drive the easiest way to do format it is to use the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. If you are using an external hard disk drive, you can format it using Disk Management in the Computer Management MMC. Obviously, formatting your drive will destroy any data currently stored on it, so if you want to keep that data make sure you transfer it somewhere before you proceed. I do not want to be blamed for any loss of important data, no matter how obvious this should be! Part 1.1a - Format your USB flash drive Connect your USB drive and then launch the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You should see a list of all of the removable drives on your computer. Unless you have more than one USB drive connected, or a card reader, you should see that your USB drive is the only device in the Device list and is already selected. If not, select the correct drive now. Under File system select NTFS. Change the Volume label to Multiboot or something similar, to make identification easier later. Finally, tick the Quick Format option. The panel should look something like this: Click Start to accept these settings, and when prompted click Yes to confirm that you want to proceed with the format. After a few moments, the format should be completed and you will be shown various information regarding the volume serial number, how many bytes are available etc.. Click OK and then close the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. Part 1.1b - Format your USB hard disk drive Connect your USB hard disk drive and launch the Disk Management MMC either by opening Computer Management from the control panel, or running "diskmgmt.msc" from the run dialogue. You will see a list of all of the drives in your computer, including all of the fixed ones. Locate your USB hard drive and delete the existing partition(s) on it by right clicking them and selecting Delete Volume. Although you can use the entire drive as a single large partition, it makes sorting your data difficult as your personal files will be combined with the files required for the multiboot - it can get messy very quickly, so it's best to use at least to partitions. Once you have deleted any existing partitions, right click the empty space and select New Volume (note - if you are using Windows XP then you will probably see New Partition instead of New Volume. Don't ask me why they are different!). Select Primary partition as the partition type, then click Next. Enter a space in MB that is large enough for your planned usage. I typically use 32GB for my multiboot partition and the rest for my data, so I enter 32768 as the partition size, although you can make it smaller or larger if you like, then click Next. Assign any available drive letter, then click Next. You will now need to choose how to format the partition, so select NTFS as the File system, leave the Allocation unit size as default, and enter a Volume label of your choosing - I used Multiboot. Select Perform a quick format and then click Next, and then click Finish. Windows will now create your partition and format it for you. Once this has finished, you should have something that looks like this; Part 1.2 - Make the partition active Now that your drive has been correctly formatted, you will need to make the new partition active. This is done via a Microsoft command line tool called DiskPart. Open the command prompt either from the Start -> All Programs -> Accessories menu, or by typing CMD into the run dialogue. Start DiskPart by typing diskpart and pressing return. You will now need to identify the disk number assigned to your USB drive, so type list disk to view a list of all of the drives in your computer. In this example, the USB drive is disk 1. Select the disk by entering select disk # where # is the disk number. Select partition 1 by entering select partition 1, and mark it active by with active. DiskPart will confirm that this has been successful, as demonstrated below; The partition is now marked as active. You can now exit DiskPart or close the command prompt. Your USB drive is now properly prepared for being made bootable. In the next step, I will explain how to use some third party tools to streamline the process. Part two: prepare the Windows Vista/2008 installation images Essential items & software for this part: Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) Windows Vista and/or Server 2008 and or Windows 7 installation media for whichever editions you wish to install GImageX - GUI for ImageX, not essential but highly recommended Special thanks to chon_ from the msfn.org forum for the original instructions from which I derived this part of the guide. Now that you have your USB drive ready for use, it's time to prepare your Windows installation source. This is done via the ImageX tool, which is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit, or WAIK. ImageX can export individual images from the install.wim found on the standard Windows Vista and Server 2008 media. If you do not wish to change the images in your install.wim then you can simply extract uploads/Management/ multi-boot-guide.pdf