DOCUMENT for inclusion in User or Technician Manuals

Title: USB Flash Drive Booting and Ghosting Q-Pulse Document Number: DOC17
Current Manual Title: Technician Megahelp (to be
Software Release effective from:
included)
Written By: Clint Evenbly Revision Number: 1.0
Authorised By: Ken Lee Active Date: 3 September 2007

1. Associated Documents
There is a Wiki page dedicated to the R&D of this system located at:
http://swvirtual/Wiki/USB%20Flash%20Boot%20Drive%20Configuration.ashx

2. About the Flash Drive

The 8GB flash drive serves three different purposes:
1. It replaces the 512MB CSEInternal flash drive as the secondary backup media for Sizer and Invision
backups.

2. It contains a bootloader allowing the PC to be easily booted to a diagnostic and recovery environment in
the event that of hard drive failure. The tools contained on the drive are Symantec Ghost 8.0, Seagate
Seatools, and Memtest 86+.

3. It replaces the DVD burner and DVD’s as the storage media for the ghost image of the PC.

3. Partition Structure
The 8GB flash drive is structured with two partitions to make use of the fact that Windows XP/Vista refuse to
acknowledge more than 1 partition on a USB flash drive, giving large security benefits to the second partition
that we do not want to be modified by the user.

The first partition is 1GB and named CSEInternal, it can be treated identically to the old 512MB flash drive that
was dedicated to backups.

The second partition is named CSEBOOT and occupies the remaining 6.5GB or so on the drive. This partition
contains the bootloader files, the tools, and is used to store the Ghost image.

4. The Bootloader
Grub4DOS is used as the bootloader, it is installed into the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the flash drive and
then contains two files on any local disk.

During startup you will notice that it scans each disk/partition for these files. The files are stored in CSEBOOT -
they are “grldr” (the rest of the bootloader that is not installed into the MBR); and “menu.lst” (the configuration
file where the menu options can be manipulated).

The menu.lst configuration for booting Windows XP and Windows Vista are slightly different, check the Wiki for
further details. Booting Windows Vista has been tested and works.

5. Bios Configuration
Advanced > USB Configuration > USB Mass Storage Device Configuration > Device #1 Emulation Type
> [Hard Disk].
This explicitly guarantees that the BIOS will emulate the flash drive as a hard drive. You will need to reboot for
this to take effect if the flash drive was being emulated as a different device type.

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Boot > Hard Disk Drives > 1st Drive > [USB:brandname].
This sets the primary system hard drive to the flash drive, allowing Grub4DOS to become the system
bootloader.

Boot > Boot Device Priority > 1st Boot Device > [USB:brandname].
This sets the flash drive as the first device that the system attempts to boot from.

If there is a CDROM or DVDROM installed on the PC it should not be placed higher in the boot sequence than
the flash drive. If it is placed higher then during a boot attempt, the SATA based chipset on the P5K
motherboards internally configures these drives in a way that causes Ghost to crash.

If a DVDROM is installed in the system and does not appear on the boot sequence it may be used from within
Ghost, and if Ghost is never loaded while booting from a CD or DVD it works fine.

So, it is possible to boot from a CD or DVD for purposes other than Ghosting if necessary, but the BIOS should
never be left in a state where the optical drive is higher in the boot sequence than the flash drive.

6. The Boot Procedure

During system boot, Grub4DOS scans the local drives for its files and you’ll see some text indicating this.

Once it finds the files, it displays the menu, waits 3 seconds and then, if no key is pressed, it loads Windows.
During this wait time the “p” key can be pressed and then the technician password “lah” entered to allow the
“Compac Tools” option to be selected. DOS 7.1 is then loaded and a DOS based mouse driven menu is
displayed, allowing the user to easily select which tool to run.

7. Compac Tools
• Symantec Ghost 8.0 is the version previously used on the boot CD’s/DVD’s, the procedure for using it has
not changed. The ghost images should be stored in the root of CSEBOOT.
• Memtest 86+ 1.70 is a DOS based version of the memory testing program that was previously used, the
procedure for using it has not changed.
• Seagate Seatools for DOS v1.09 is a DOS version of the Seagate Seatools previously used. Seatools for
DOS has a different user interface and offers more functionality in terms of its ability to display the current
drive temp and also the maximum temperature that the drive has ever reached. The long test should be run
as this includes the surface scan that we require.

8. Deleting Old Ghost Files

You can get to a DOS prompt by pressing Esc at the DOS menu. The DOS prompt is needed to delete the old
Ghost image before making a new one.
• “dir /w” – list the contents of the current directory
• “cd <directory>” - change into a directory
• “cd..” – move up one directory level
• “cd\” – move to the root of the drive
• “del <filename>” – deletes a file. “*” is a wildcard, “delete *.gh*” should delete all ghost files in the current
directory. It is safer to list the contents of the directory and then type in the exact file name.

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(DOC17).doc
©2007 Compac Sorting Equipment Ltd Active Date: 3/9/2007 Date Printed: 03-09-07