HOWTO - Bootable Windows XP System on a USB Flash Drive

I really need to create (or bring back as it turns out) a website for tutorials on random computer-related topics. As it is, this is going on my blog for now, and I'll just crib it or link to it later if I get around to getting a website going again.

I recently had need to create a bootable Windows XP system on a 1 GB USB flash drive. Seemed like it would be pretty simple to me...turns out it isn't. Microsoft likes to mess with the USB driver on boot up which isn't a good thing when you are booting from a USB device.

After looking on the Internet for quite a while, I found a tutorial that helped me accomplish what I needed. The original tutorial I followed is at (http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded/2005-10/msg00332.html). While I am very thankful to have found this, I thought I could possibly write a more succinct tutorial, and that's what follows here.

Final note - this most likely isn't the best way to do this, or the simplest. It worked for me and might be useful for others, so I think it is worth posting here. I did find another tutorial that might be a more correct way to do this at (http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8). I haven't tried it though, so YMMV.

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Initial preparation

1. Make the intended target USB flash drive installable. See the following section for help with this.
2. Boot the newly installed XP install from the hard drive.
3. Disable the pagefile. This is done by opening the system control panel, choosing the advanced tab, clicking the top “settings” button, changing to the advanced tab, clicking the “change” button, and then choosing the “No paging file” option and clicking “Set”.
4. Insert the intended target USB flash drive, and allow it to be fully detected by XP.
   
   

Registry modifications

1. Backup the HKLM\System registry key before starting (just to be safe).
2. Import or make the following modifications to 6 registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbehci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbhub]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\usbuhci]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Group"="Boot Bus Extender"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\usb#root_hub]
"Service"="usbhub"
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\usb#root_hub20]
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"
"Service"="usbhub"

3. Create 2 registry keys based on the specific USB flash drive that will be used. Following are 2 examples – the key names will have to be customized for the Pid/Vid and hardware ID of the specific target flash device. The ClassGUID and Service keys should be entered verbatim.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\USB#Vid_1058&Pid_0300]
"ClassGUID"="{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}"
"Service"="usbstor"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CriticalDeviceDataba
se\USBSTOR#DiskWDC_____WD1600BB-00FTA0_15.0]
"ClassGUID"="{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"
"Service"="disk"

The Pid/Vid for the target USB flash device can be found in HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB. Open the subkey for each item until you find the DriverDesc of USB Mass Storage Device, a Service of USBSTOR, and a LocationInformation that matches your specific flash drive.

The hardware ID can be found in HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR. In this example the chosen key would look like:

Disk&Ven_WDC&Produ_WD1600BB-00FTA0&Rev_15.0

Again, find the device that matches your specific flash drive.

The Hardware ID is created as Disk(8)(16)(4) where the values are:

8 digits (in this example WDC_____ ) as the vendor of device
16 digits (in this example WD1600BB-00FTA0_ ) for the device type and
4 digits (in this example 15.0 ) for a version number.

4. Delete key HKLM\System\MountedDevices.
5. Delete string value HKLM\System\Setup\SystemPartition
6. Change HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR\Start from 3 to 0.
   (THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT – YOU WILL GET A BLUE SCREEN IF THIS ISN’T CHANGED)
7. Right-click on the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR key and change the permissions to deny full control to the “System” group.
   
   

Preparing the target flash device

This step likely has to be done from another PC, or while booted to a different drive. Otherwise, some files end up being in use.

1. Copy all files and folders from the completed hard drive to the USB target flash drive. Do not copy the recycled or system volume information folders.
2. Delete \windows\system32\config\*.sav, *.log, and *.evt.

Adding support for additional USB flash devices

To add additional USB flash drive support to the original hard drive image, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\USBSTOR key and remove the deny full control to the “System” group attributes that were set in step #7 in the registry section above.
2. Insert the additional targeted USB flash drive, and allow it to be fully detected by XP as in step #4 of the initial preparation section above.
3. Follow steps 3-7 of the registry modification section above.

EDIT: It turns out there is more to this than what I have posted. This will be limited to a specific flash drive, not just a certain PID_VID. The image will need to be recreated with each additional flash part that will be used added to the registry for this to not blue screen when moved to a different flash drive. Suck.

What's old IMAP is new IMAP again

Leave it to Google to make ancient software cool again. I switched from POP3 to IMAP back in 1997 while I was still going to school and working at U of I. I used it all the way up until I switched everything over to Gmail web-goodness. Most of that time, it seemed that almost nobody else cared or used IMAP, they were almost all using POP.

Now, suddenly, after Gmail introduces this feature it suddenly comes off as the newest and coolest thing around. Amazing. In my mind (and apparently a sentiment shared by others) it is long overdue. I actually wanted to switch the domain for one of my email addresses to Google Hosted a while back, and the lack of IMAP for use on my friend's cell phone was the reason we couldn't.

So, I now am so stuck on the gmail web experience that I really have no use for this feature, but since it was on one of my accounts, I decided to give it a whirl.

Overall, it looks like they have done a very good job with it. I think it appears to function well and I think all of the logistical questions that I have are now answered. Here are my thoughts.

The Good

1. Labels show up as separate IMAP folders. Better still (and to answer one of my main questions), if you tag something with multiple labels it shows up in multiple folders under IMAP. Very nice.
2. Inbox and folders are shown at the top level, and then hidden under a [Gmail] folder is essentially the folder list from the left-hand side of the web interface. Thus "all mail" and friends are available, but nicely hidden.
3. Refer to #1. Now, try to go the other way. Dragging a message into a folder will automatically add that label to the message in gmail, copying to multiple will add all of them. Very slick.
   

The Bad

1. Remember Gmail's fantastic idea that you never delete anything, you just archive it? Fantastic idea, I've raved like a lunatic about the value of data for a while now, and I use this as a shining example of how to do it right. Until you have to fetch all of those headers over IMAP... Outlook (my unfortunate choice of IMAP client) froze completely for about 10 minutes trying to pull this off. Most of that is Outlooks fault though. As long as you never fetch the headers for the "all mail" folder, this shouldn't be too terrible (maybe).
2. This actually isn't anything against Google, it is against Microsoft. It turns out there wasn't as much bad as I expected, so this is filler. I setup the account in Outlook to use IMAP, and I happen to have a gmail address that is "something.somethingelse@gmail.com". Outlook politely warned me that my email address looked invalid, but then happily continued and worked perfectly. Morons. Reminds me of when BestBuy.com couldn't handle the hyphen in one of my email addresses. Read the email RFC's guys, this isn't hard.

So, good job Google. Your implementation of 1990's technology seems superb.

Pain and Suffering - Courtesy of Redmond

This one is for the true geeks, or those who just like to be dumbfounded by how bad software can go. In this case, it demonstrates how software can interact in completely odd and unexpected ways, and this is why computers are far less deterministic and stable than they should be.

I was attempting to install Silverlight. I'm not really going to even get into why, that's not important at this point.

The important part is that after downloading and running the installer, it stopped with an error at 90%. The installer splash screen then pointed me to this incredibly helpful error page: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/help.aspx?errorID=2. Once my head quit spinning, I started investigating a bit more. Obviously, the error page didn't help in the slightest, it was actually completely out of date. I tried moving the file, extracting it manually, various things did not work.

Amazingly, I did actually find the problem, thanks to a point where I had moved the installer to my root c: drive, but the temp folder still magically showed up on my desktop with a reference to s:.

It is at this point that I should mention a cool little trick I have setup on all of my Windows machines. I create a batch file that runs automatically at startup, using the old dos "subst" command to map a drive letter to my desktop. Yes, I was adept at tab-completing the full profile name (documents and settings\username\yada yada), but it's much nicer having it as my s: drive.

So, seeing the s: drive in the error message tipped me off. I deleted my shortcut drive, and lo and behold it all worked. Bizarre.

If you've read this far, you probably need professional help. I'm still in denial.

The Underwhelming Sound of Zune

At this point Zune has been covered nearly ad-nauseum, and it wasn't even released until today. However, like others, I have some quick thoughts of my own.

I was in Wal-Mart today, and I walked near the digital audio players (DAP for all the cool kids out there) section. I immediately saw one of the new pink iPod nanos, as well as the incredibly cool piece of design that is the new shuffle. I stood there and drooled over the new shuffle, looked over the selection as a whole and then moved on.

Only then, did I realize I had walked right past the Zune display without taking any notice whatsoever. There weren't any big signs, just some small ones that said both Microsoft and Zune. I looked at it, and realized that if it weren't made by Microsoft I never would have even given it a glance. (Somebody please post in the comments the link to the Zune-poo comparison).

Microsoft better hope that their name and the silly music sharing feature are enough. I don't see much else here to make it compete with Creative or iRiver, let alone Apple.

What is old is new again

First, a quick update on my last post. I have IE7 installed. It looks a bit more like Firefox, I like the integrated RSS renderer and feed handling, and they did at least try to address some security concerns. However, it is still just IE. There is just no way I can go back anymore, I like my Firefox, and especially the customizations I can get courtesy of Extensions and Greasemonkey too much.

Moving on to music. Quick, when was the first rap song made? Okay, how about the first explicit rap song? No, n00bs, Kanye West and Jay-Z did not invent rap. However, I would have been way off base myself. I would not have guessed back in 1965 we had someone dropping the funky beats, in a very explicit manner, but it happened. Moreover, iTunes actually carries it: "Rap Dirty" by Blowfly. Give it a listen, I was amused/impressed.

More on music. I had heard of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in the past, and always showed no interest as it was primarily jam bands like Phish, who I like to listen to, but pretty much ignore. Who of all groups should happen to be at this year's event though? Blackalicious. That would have been awesome to see (especially if they had happened to bring along Lyrics Born...).

UPDATE: iTunes link fixed. I have also finished adding labels to all of my posts for 2006. Eventually I may tackle 2005 as well.

Free (as in Ski)

I need something fun and frivolous. This will do.

I hope this needs no introduction. I hope that you had SkiFree on a Win 3.1 box back in the day. You loved the cheesiness, you really loved the abominable snowman that would come eat you. Yes, silly game goodness.

I happened to stumble onto the page for the game the other day. It turns out the guy was a Microsoft guy who basically wrote this as a side project. He retained rights to change the code, so he has built some new versions that work better with WinXP and such. Sweet!

Testing. I'm in beta, watch out!

I mostly despise computers. Really, I do. I like using them as tools, I do it all day long for work, and often far too much at home. However, I don't actually like mucking around with them anymore.

Case in point, I started reinstalling my main machine last night. Too many years, too many odd things, have made it start to act funny. Plus, I wanted to upgrade a drive in it anyway. Man, I hate reinstalling.

However, despite all that, sometimes I like trying out new, silly software. Today's silly software is a piece of blogging software by none other than Microsoft. I really should find out some day how some of these little side projects actually get released as a Microsoft product. I know how hard it is for me to get a company product released, I'm not sure how they let these slip through.

Anyway, just announced today is a beta of something they call Windows Live Writer. It is of course aimed at their new Live site. However, they have nicely included support for other blogs. Not just for posting either, using the crappy Blogger API they were actually able to pull down my previous posts, and my visual style.

Now, rather than using the horrendous Blogger web interface (Google, you're sleeping at the wheel, yo), I can use a familiar interface. Supposedly this may be a small foreshadowing of the Blog support to be included in Word 2007. I really don't care, I just hope it doesn't have the standard Word annoyances, thus far it hasn't.

Oh, did I mention that now the spell check uses your system dictionary, so all that stuff you have taught it in Word or Outlook is still there. Nice. Plus it actually saves drafts for me, rather than eating them.

Well, if you are reading this, I believe this program has accomplished all that I wanted from it. I'm pleased.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the app. Also, here is a review that has already been written, linked from UneasySilence.

...and a screenshot for Ryan:

Brain Dump

Lots of small random thoughts, so I'm going to throw out a bunch of posts.

I show up today at work, and Google Talk is staring at me, with lots of doodads, and a message saying that there are new features available. I really like having pictures back, that is something I missed from MSN Messenger. I also like that you can now theme your chat windows, the original now really looks like crap.

2 things I find interesting. It seems as if pictures may be stored on Google's site, as I can see pictures for people who are offline (or at least unavailable, maybe that is the key). Also, partychat has a default picture, but it is slightly different than the default pictures for people using alternate IM clients (and currently down, big surprise there). Google, give us group chats, please.

Media Fun

I had heard Blogs were dead, but I guess they can't be. Here is my latest blog find. Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em.

Read this article if you are at all interested in Windows Vista. I admit, the writer is VERY pro-Microsoft, but he did introduce several new items I didn't expect. It looks like a solid upgrade to me.

I Spy

Spyware, that inherently evil beast lurking out on the Internet, turns out to actually be very controllable with the appropriate software steps.

First, of course, is quit running that screen door on the front of your computer known as Internet Explorer. Switching to Firefox pretty much single-handedly stopped any spyware from appearing on my computers that I use.

Next, keep an anti-spyware program around, just in case. I have ran various versions of these over the years (all free of course, the pay spyware program are often spyware themselves, or simply don't offer any benefits over free). I initially used AdAware, and then later added in Spybot Search and Destroy to pick up some that AdAware missed. However, when Microsoft bought Giant and released their product as Microsoft Anti-Spyware beta, I switched to that and never looked back.

Microsoft (actually Giant)'s product had a much simpler user-interface, found 100% of the spyware, including some the others missed, and generally seemed to just work. Being a beta, there were some things I didn't like of course. Navigating in the UI was sometimes non-obvious. Mostly I didn't like that if you were running a scan and decided to change an option, it stopped the scan. Also, Microsoft obviously hadn't fully integrated the code, as it still showed up in process explorer as Giant Antispyware and the look and feel was theirs.

Yesterday though, Microsoft released beta 2 of the product, and it is now renamed to Microsoft Defender. A bit of an ambiguous name, but I like the product a lot. It now looks, feels, and behaves like a Windows product (a good thing in this case). The user-interface is now very simple and easy to use, and overall it is very nicely integrated and automated. It can just sit there and do its job like I want. I recommend installing it. It is one of the downloads that require verifying that you have a "Genuine Windows" installation, but that isn't a big deal. Microsoft now even provides a nice helper application to allow validation while running Firefox.

Finally, since this has turned into a bit of a Internet protection post, I would recommend running AVG as an anti-virus program. Yes, viruses are not the big of an issue, since I don't run untrusted programs. However, I get enough emails with viruses in them, that it is nice to have AVG take care of that for me. There are probably other good free virus scanners, but overall I prefer AVG.

Oh, Back to school, back to school...

Not really school, work actually. I just love coming back from a long break and dealing with the fun of Microsoft software.

First, I had to unlock my account. Why? No idea.

Next, I get this gem from Outlook and the Exchange Server: