Boot From Usb On An Older System

Discussion in 'Software' started by Dumb_Question, Feb 22, 2017.

  1. Dumb_Question

    Dumb_Question Sergeant Major

    Not sure whether this should be in hardware or software, but I'm putting in software because it is software controlled.

    It's about booting and the BIOS

    First, it's an old system with PATA/IDE connections for disk drives - two optical drives on the secondary cable (master and slave) and (up to) two HDDs on the primary cable (master and slave)

    My PC can be set, under the right configuration of hardware, to have the following order of boot prioriy from its HDDs:
    1. USB - type of disk (eg WD5000, or HDS723232VLAT80 etc)
    2. Primary Slave - type of disk
    3. Add-in cards

    In the absence of Primary master or slave disks, the system defaults to Add-in cards as first priority for HD boot unless it is changed in the BIOS editor. Thus the configuration I am trying at present is
    1. USB - type of disk (eg WD5000, or HDS723232VLAT80 etc)
    2. Add-in cards
    as I have disconnected the main HDDs to ensure the only bootable drive is on the USB. This disk contains only a clone of a known-bootable drive made from a slave drive.

    Having edited the BIOS to make first choice USB and also first choice a HDD (rather than CD or LAN) as described just above, the system continues, briefly showing a message a message saying it's using Ge7800GS graphics card, and then ARRRGHHHH...it black screens with just a blinking white dash-cursor at the top left of the screen.

    What's wrong, what do I do now considering the computer might still be accessing the USB drive, and how can I make this computer boot from USB, given that it implies in BIOS ediitor that it can ?

    Dumb_Question
    22.February.2017
    Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
    Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
    Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
    RAM - 1GB +1GB DDR PC2700
    PSU - OCZ 500W StealthXStream {upgraded from Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])}
    GeForce 7800GS graphics card in AGP slot.
     
  2. foogoo

    foogoo Major "foogoo" Geek

    Are you trying to boot an external hard drive? Is that drive setup to boot? How did you prep it?
     
  3. Dumb_Question

    Dumb_Question Sergeant Major

    Hi foogoo, thank you for your response

    Yes, I am trying to boot from an external hard drive.

    I think the drive is set up to boot - it is supposed to be an exact copy (a clone) of a known-bootable (in primary slave position on IDE cable) drive.
    [identical except that the USB drive is 320GB and primary slave was a 500GB, but the two partitions comprising 80GB are in the lowest sectors; the upper sectors of both drives are unallocated space, so the missing 500GB - 320GB = 180GB was empty]

    I did not "prep" the external drive except to set the BIOS to boot from that drive as highest priority, and use an identical copy of a bootable drive, as I have said both in this post and my first post. Your post implies there are other steps I ought to have taken: what might they be please ?

    Dumb_question
    22.February.2017
     
  4. Earthling

    Earthling Interplanetary Geek

    I would suggest connecting it initially as primary master and resetting the BIOS boot order to see if it boots normally in that situation. This article is helpful http://www.easeus.com/resource/install-ide-hard-drive.htm

    Even if the disk is correctly configured for booting it still may fail to do so when connected by USB even when the BIOS offers that option. I have a ten year old Medion that has a USB boot option but has never been able to do so. It runs 10 beautifully though!
     
  5. Dumb_Question

    Dumb_Question Sergeant Major

    Thanks for your input, Earthling. That was something I was going to do next....
    I had to turn computer by power down on front panel, as nothing had changed for hours (blinking white cursor).
    I connected the disk into primary slave (no primary master connected), powered up and changed BIOS to primary slave highest priority on boot. The computer then booted into XP as with the 500GB HDD.
    Similar situation to your Medion, earthling, it would appear.

    The BIOS editor offers a maximum of three slots for choosing HDD boot priority, i.e., top priority, 2nd priority and bottom priority. In any case, one slot is ALWAYS occupied by the Add-in card option - I don't know what this means, and I haven't got any likely add-in cards; presumably it refers to storage media such as HDDs which are mounted on a card which fits into one of the PCI slots. USB external HDDs only show when one is present AND only one HDD is connected to the IDE cable; thus if I have both primary master and slave disks connected and powered, I do not get the the option of boot from USB even if one is connected. I only get the option of booting from USB if there is one or more connected and I have only one HDD connected on the primary IDE cable.

    The question that remains in my mind is "Why show a boot from USB option if this is never going to work ?" Back to foogoo's question "Is that drive setup to boot? How did you prep it?" perhaps.

    One more thing about booting from USB/external HDDs on this machine is that when I boot into the PLoP boot manager CD and select 'USB' the display shows 'loading EHC1 drivers", and gets stuck there. Does anyone have any idea what's going on there ?

    This question is almost solved apart from a few loose ends described above

    Dumb_question
    22.February.2017
     
  6. foogoo

    foogoo Major "foogoo" Geek

    if you attach the drive to another system do you see the folders, like Windows, etc?
    Is it a copy of the system you're trying to boot it in? Trying to boot a drive in a "strange" system can cause that freezing and BSOD.

    Get HxD from https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
    Go to extras and open disk.. do you see any text there about booting?
     

    Attached Files:

  7. Dumb_Question

    Dumb_Question Sergeant Major

    ->foogoo
    If I boot from another disk (such a CD with XP PE) everything is there, no matter if the non-booting from USB-disk is attached to the USB port or the primary slave. My previous post showed that the non-booting from USB-disk will boot when it is the primary slave disk. This is all with the same system so there is no question of a strange system, though I take that point.

    I have HxD, and I have used it a while back - something about booting or changing the file system on a used disk: I have not used it on this problem though. IIRC there is a code (hex 80) in one particular location that determines if that is the boot partition - there was a page in blog called 'analysing the MBR' which told you about this stuff but that website seems to have been taken down now.

    However, I asked about a related topic on the HP forum http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Deskto...external-HDD-on-IDE-System/m-p/6000120#M41062 and the response was definitive:
    I regard this as very likely but not infallible.

    Dumb_Question
    23.February.2017
     
  8. mdonah

    mdonah Major Geek Extraordinaire

    That is, in fact, the reason the computer isn't booting from USB. You CANNOT boot XP from USB. AFAIK, Windows 8 or later is needed. I do, in fact, boot Windows 8.1 and 10 from USB created with WintoUSB.
     
    the mekanic likes this.
  9. Earthling

    Earthling Interplanetary Geek

    This guy doesn't agree with that mdonah and I wish I had the time/will to see if he is right. Sadly, my urge to make things happen that aren't supposed to happen died a death with XP.
     
  10. mdonah

    mdonah Major Geek Extraordinaire

    What's discussed in that link is a PE Flash drive. The OP is trying to boot a hard drive with a full XP install (a cloned internal drive). I've tried this myself and XP, itself, threw up a message stating you can't boot XP from USB. Microsoft didn't want XP to be portable and they made sure it wasn't.
     
    the mekanic likes this.
  11. the mekanic

    the mekanic Major Mekanical Geek

    With XP they're talking about booting it means a pre-OS environment or installing software to a permanent disc, i.e (X:) is often the boot drive for a command prompt, where (C:) is the target disk attached to the system board. However there is Rufus which can create a USB key for install.

    As far as a PE to get the machine running:

    Read up here: http://erpxe.org/Windows_PE_1.0
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment

    also:

    http://techgage.com/article/creating-bootable-windows-xp-7-8-flash-drive-installers/

    and here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment#Windows_Recovery_Environment
     
  12. the mekanic

    the mekanic Major Mekanical Geek


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