Boot Windows XP from a Fat32 Formatted a USB Flash Drive

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A bootable USB key is a handy tool for a variety of purposes. Most of the people use BartPE to install light-weight windows on their USB key. Booting from 2GB+ (4/8/16GB) FAT32 formatted flash disk (thumb-drive) needs a work-around procedure. (NTFS formatting a USB key is discouraged because it wears out the memory sooner and shortens its life).

Steps

  1. Get the following things:
  2. Insert your USB key and your Windows 98SE Bootable Floppy.

    [Note: if your PC does not have a floppy drive then you may use virtual Floppy Disk along with a win98 floppy image
  3. Run the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool"

    Select your USB key

    Set the file system to FAT32

    Check "Create a DOS startup disk"

    Select win98 Floppy (or Virtual-Floppy) drive location A: or B:

    Click "Start"
  4. Install PE Builder

    [Note: just install, don't run it yet.]

    If you like to have same look and feel as XP then you have to replace two files: (otherwise skip to Step4)
    1- Take your favourite wallpaper file, convert it to bmp and save it as "bartpe.bmp" in your PE Builder installation directory.
    2- Download "http://jdfoxmicro.com/resource-center/articles/logging-off-windows/WindowsXP_Start_button.bmp".
    Save it as "nu2go.bmp" in "\plugin\nu2menu" subdirectory in PE Builder installation directory.
  5. Extract srsp1.zip to PE Builder installation directory. [i.e. "srsp1" is a sub-directory with 2 files in it (ramdisk.sys and setupldr.bin).]

    Note: If you want to add applications to your BartPE, then you have to do it at this point. It is not very easy step for a beginner, specially creation of the menu tree.
  6. Start PE Builder (pebuilder.exe).

    If you don't have your windows XP setup/installation files on your system you must insert the original Microsoft Windows XP installation/setup CD at this point.

    [Note: The files you have at c:\windows are not installation files. They are already installed files!]

    Select "Source" path to XP(SP2) setup CD or setup files location.

    Leave "Custom:" location empty.

    "Output:" field must be filled as "BartPE" (without quotes)

    Click "Build" button.

    PE Builder will now start building BartPE. This will take a few minutes.
  7. Extract pe2usb-f32.cmd out of pe2usb-f32.zip to PE Builder installation directory.

    Open command prompt in PE Builder installation directory.

    run command "pe2usb-f32 J:" ("J:" is just example, it should be your USB Key drive letter)

    It will take a while, and create an iso file in your USB key.
  8. Rename the "ntldr" file to "usbntldr" in root of USB.

    (Because grub will search all drives for this file name and will boot from the first drive where it finds the bootloader, so we change the name to avoid conflict with one on hard disk)
  9. Step-8:

    Select all the files for GRUB4DOS and copy them to the root of the USB key.

    Open config.sys and edit the second line to read:

    device=grub.exe --config-file="color black/cyan yellow/cyan;timeout 0;default 0;title find and load NTLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP;find --set-root /usbntldr;chainloader /usbntldr"

    delete himem.sys and emm386.exe lines

    "Wow, DONE!"

    Boot from your USB key!!!
    (Note: You would have to either specify USB as first boot device in CMOS/BIOS, or manually select USB device while bypassing the default boot sequence/order by pressing appropriate key e.g. F12/F10/F2/F1 or Del etc. at beginning of boot.)

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