How to boot from an onboard USB stick

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Here from another thread is what I am trying to do:

My 8gb SanDisk Cruzer U3 Mini is now permanently stuck into a PCI USB card inside my machine, and my BIOS is capable of seeing it as an "USB-CDROM" at system startup. SanDisk's OEM stuff on the Cruzer can be removed but not modified, so I have just downloaded http://www.nticorp.com/en/us/product/ninja4.asp to use for customizing my Cruzer after removing its OEM stuff ...

Question: What makes a CD autoboot?

Question: What makes a CD autoboot?

The setting for this are in your BIOS, usually accessed by pressing DEL or F# depending on your motherboard, look for your boot priority and edit to match your requirements.

usual boot priority:
1: HDD
2: CD-ROM
3: FLOPPY/USB/NETWORK.

sorry if I've misunderstood your question.

I thank you. I think I have things right in my BIOS now, but I do not know what to put on the stick. What I want to do is to make some kind of "autoboot.inf" file that will run from the stick when the machine starts. Part of that file will include a copy of my existing Windows' "boot.ini" file:

=================================
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Pro" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2K Pro" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
c:\="Windows 98 lite"
=================================

... and after that, I will figure out how to call GRUB or some other utility placed on a partition somewhere for booting into my Linux Mint and whatever else as well as to my Win7's BCD.

it is different for each OS.
all instructions for XP are on this site: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/51 ... 28902.html

Fedora have a downloadable cross-platform USB boot creator at https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

My first trial here was going to be Lau's "Puppy" on another machine, and I will still do that, but at the moment SOS "Blueberry" is downloading to the stick I have inside this machine.

I thank you for that link!

Ah. I remembered "Smart BootManager": http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

I used this for quite a while, in this system, when I had problems booting from multiple sources.

It's nine years old and lives in a 1.4 floppy.

You can always adapt the source code (GPL v2) to work off a USB stick.

Nice, and I thank you.

I now have the internal USB stick being seen by my BIOS, but the new SuperGRUB2's USB function just hangs when I try to install it there. So for now, I am back to using SuperGRUB on a disk for booting so I can get to my Mint installation ... and I will let you know how things turn out with "Puppy". I was headed that direction a couple of days, but got distracted.

If anyone might happen to know ...

What kind of MS-DOS command would tell the system to "Go boot the CD on that drive?"

For example, my "boot.ini" presently says this:

==============================
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Pro" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2K Pro" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
c:\="Windows 98 lite"
==============================

... and there just *has* to be some kind of line I can add there to tell my machine to go boot something else.

I tried to get some help over on the Ubuntu forum but got no response at all from those arrogant bastards!

Maybe I should not have mentioned my Mint, eh?!

Oh, and the resolution in my Mint has been totally screwed by either Puppy or GPartEd ... and I cannot figure out how to fix it. At something like 300 X 400 right now, going in there is like trying to wade through a big glob of green jelly!

I don't think that's possible with XP or 7's boot loader.

EasyBCD can do it with Win7's loader and ...

I cannot find the instructions at the moment because I am not on my main machine, but "Puppy" already has an option for doing just that by letting GRUB install Puppy's loader on the flash drive where it (Puppy) is installed, then adding a line directly into XP's "boot.ini" ... but that would put me right back in that far-too-dangerous danger zone of "Just let GRUB do it!"

Oh no. I can make plenty of mistakes all by myself!

In any case, and aside from the learning curve here, it just cannot be any big deal to step in-between my BIOS and my boot sector. All I need is to find some way to place some kind of interrupt or sidestep going-around-the-house-to-get-to-the-barn routine there. And for an Aspie like me, the best way to get something done is to tell me it *cannot* be done! If it can be imagined, you and me and Fuzzy and Orwell can most definitely make it happen, eh?!

The arrogant silence of those f--kers at the Ubuntu forum who know how to do this has really got me all wound up now ...

Well, here is Firefox inside "Puppy" on a stick ... and this makes me wonder why any of us still mess around with boxes and hard drives!

After a few trials and errors on my part while figuring out what to do, the "Puppy" disk turned out to be a really nice-and-handy utility for setting up USB sticks or "flash drives" for just about anything, I think. I set mind up as an "USB-Floppy" with no MBR or partitions and my machine picked it up and ran it exactly as it should.

Too cool!

If you're trying to boot before your OS loads you need to change the boot order in your BIOS. It should tell you which button to press when the machine starts up.

Yes, and that is working just fine! My current dilemma, however, can be seen in this single example:

The loader for my Linux Mint is installed on Mint's "/boot" partition located near the middle of my third hard drive, and my BIOS can only go to the *beginning* of any drive specified.

So, here is what I have available at the moment:

BIOS to drive 0 (sda): Win7 loader with other Windows as additional selections;
BIOS to drive 1 (sdb): "system disk not found" error (with Mint out on its own partition);
BIOS to drive 2 (sdc): "system disk not found" error (storage drive);
BIOS to CD-ROM: SuperGRUB on a CD so I can get to Mint as well as back to Windows;
BIOS to USB: Linux "Puppy" (on a stick).

I have previously made several attempts to "Just let GRUB do it all!" at the boot sector on drive 0 (sda), but GRUB just cannot handle being a "GCS" (Grand Central Station) in this system.

But now that I know I can use the Puppy disc to make my USB device look like a floppy, today I am headed back toward the "SmartBoot" utility Lau has mentioned ... and I believe that will allow me to do the same as on my Commodores many years ago where I had a simple "DOS" menu pop up at machine startup and offer options beyond the scope of things intended for any single drive's boot sector.

PS:

What I need is something like a "SuperBIOS" or "BIOS+" (my own terms), and I do already have some third-party software that actually *can* scan my entire machine and *usually* (but not always) find things like Mint out on their isolated partitions and add them to a single boot menu ...

... but none of that software can do that perfectly, and at least one of them continually (and dangerously, imo) re-writes the boot sectors on drives whenever it sends the system from one drive to another.

In the past, I have had Debian on either my second or third hard drive, and I have let it (Debian) install GRUB on the boot sector of *that* drive while placing its own loader on its own partition there on that same drive ... and now doing that kind of thing again would leave me with something like this:

BIOS to drive 0 (sda): Win7 loader with other Windows as additional selections;
BIOS to drive 1 (sdb): GRUB to Debian, Mint and whatever else located on this drive;
BIOS to drive 2 (sdc): "system disk not found" error (storage drive);
BIOS to CD-ROM: SuperGRUB on a CD so I can get to Mint as well as back to Windows;
BIOS to USB: Linux "Puppy" (on a stick).

So in simplicity: I am essentially looking for some way to effectively "change my drive order" at system startup without having to manually manipulate my BIOS each time I want something beyond Windows.

If Windows is already installed, and will not be re-installed, then recent versions of grub should do everything you want. You might need to edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg in Fedora, and probably Ubuntu has some automagic configurator. I guess the Puppy would do it too. Certainly, my Linux has always managed to assign one MBR on one drive containing a grub that is capable of booting any operating system I have had in any partition on any drive.