real basic

Forum: USB booting
Topic: real basic
started by: Rosen

Posted by Rosen on Feb. 21 2006,23:42

Hello, I need help with the real basics and I was hoping that someone here could help me.

When I start the usb-zip installer using the live-cd, it seems that whatever i try to put in in the different fields it keep ending up with one or another error.

Like how do i know what my pendrive is called. (i understand that it's sda but what numer and such).

when it asks me for the thing about the keyboard i put in se (because i'm from sweden) but in the end this shows up as an error.

so I was wondering if anybody could tell me exactly what to do ( i realize that some things are different from computer to computer).

thx for reading and hopefully you will help me

Posted by retry3 on Feb. 22 2006,02:13

To Rosen-
Just went thru this-I finally used just plain "sda" even tho the pendrive was listed as sda1 and the home directory gets saved to "cdrom" it seems to work.
I am a genuine newbie so you should have no problem.
Good luck-
retry3

Posted by Rosen on Feb. 22 2006,10:37

Quote (retry3 @ Feb. 21 2006,21:13)

thx for your answer but ive already tried this (but what do i know it might be som other error that's ing things up) when i try to use sda1 it starts to format but it says after a while that it couldnt find sda11. this does also happen when i try to use sda0 (cant find sda01).
what am i doing wrong.

Posted by retry3 on Feb. 22 2006,16:30

Those are the very same messages I was getting using sda1 before switching to sda.
The only other thing might be that I used the hdd type of install on the pendrive instead of that other option because I saw a post somewhere that I belive was posted by cbagger01, that said that the hdd option should really be the default one, presumeably because it works more of the time. I think mikshaw also had a post touching on this re cdrom; since he is the author of that pendrive install application maybe he can enlighten both of us.
BTW, it took over two days of long hours to gather the meager results I am trying to pass along.
Try again- good luck

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 22 2006,17:54

The short answer:

USBHDD is a great first choice because:

1) Newer computers almost always support USB Hard Drive booting.
2) The script creates a SINGLE FAT hard drive partition, so the pendrive can also still be used as a regular storage device in MSWindows.
3) It works great with the USB boot floppy, so you can still use it on computers that don't support USB Hard Drive booting.

The main drawbacks to USBHDD installs are:

1) Because it creates a single FAT partition, your device cannot be larger than the MAX partition size for FAT, which is 2.1GB in size.
2) It will not automatically boot when used with a computer that ONLY supports USB Zipdrive booting.

Posted by Rosen on Feb. 22 2006,18:54

sry double post

Posted by Rosen on Feb. 22 2006,18:55

thx for your replys, i got it to work by installing it from the 2.2b instead of the 2.1b i was using before.

my next issue is how do i set up my bios to boot from the pendrive.

onthis computer i can choose the boot sequence (spelling) which is set to 1.diskette 2.cd-rom 3.hdd. i can also choose manually what i want to boot from the alternatives are diskette cd-rom and hdd C:\.

the computer is a dell 4550.

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 23 2006,17:26

You may need to visit Dell.com and upgrade your BIOS to a newer version.