Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Make CA 2GB flash drive bootable

I got a 2GB Flash Drive with CA Internet Security Suite 2007. But I was not able to boot BartPE from it.
  • I tried "PE2USB -f" to format the drive and install the PE to it. The boot sector appears OK to mkbt but I always get "Missing Operating System" error when I try to boot from it.
  • I searched about the error and found this thread: the error might be due to bad partitioning scheme on the flash drive.
  • I downloaded a MCNLive CD iso and burned it to a DVD. MCNLive is a Mandriva Linux based distribution designed to run from a USB Flash Drive or a CD.
  • After booting into MCNLive DVD (NOT using the copy2ram bootcode), I check the drive with "fdisk -l /dev/sda"and there's something abnormal about the drive, saying "Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings" etc
  • So I deleted the partion in fdisk and created a new partition. Then I went to mcc and formated the partition with FAT16 file system.
  • Finally I can create MCNLive USB. Now I relax and enjoy booting the system from the CA 2GB flash drive with "livecd copy2ram" bootcode.