Occasionally I get a PC in my shop which has a broken or non working cd drive. One of the mail tools I use is a disk called Hirens Boot CD. Yes I know its considered Warez however it is by far the best collection of tools for a PC tech around so I use it all the time. I will leave finding the actual disc up to you however once you have it you may want to create a USB drive with Hirens for situations when you dont have your cd or the cd option is unavailable.
Below I will outline how to create a Hirens Boot CD usb drive:
First off you will need 3 files:
a. Hirens Boot CD version 9.7 or newer
c. Grub4Dos.zip
1. Okay to start off with extract both of the archives and run usb format first. (This will erase all data on the drive).
2. Next we will want to run the grub4dos utility (This will need to be run as a administrator).
3. First select your usb drive after selecting the disc radio button.
4. Next hit the refresh button on the field that says part list.
5. Select Whole MBR once that is finished.
6. Now hit install. A command prompt should appear telling you to press enter to go on.
7. Copy grldr and menu.lst from the grub4dos folder to the root of the usb drive.
8. Open your Hirens Boot disc and copy the entire HNCD folder over to you thumb drive.
Thats it, once its done copying, unmount the drive and enjoy booting your new usb full of wonderful tech tools.
I realize that I’m commenting on this months after it was first posted, but I have a slightly different way of getting the job done that works for me.
I format the USB drive with Win XP ( hopefully works with any Win OS) to FAT32, I install Grub as mentioned by PureHate.
This is where I do things differently. I just copy the ISO to the USB drive and then edit my menu.lst to boot it. Yes, the ISO has to be bootable. Here is a sample menu.lst for reference:
____________________________________________________________________
color blue/green yellow/red white/magenta white/magenta
timeout 60
default 0
title Ubuntu Desktop 10.10
map (hd0,0)/ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso (hd32)
map –hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot
title Hiren’s Boot CD Ver 9.9
map (hd0,0)/HBCD99.iso (hd32)
map –hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot
title Reboot
reboot
title Halt
halt
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I like this method because when I get my hands on a new bootable ISO that I’m itching to explore, I just have to copy the ISO to the USB drive, edit my menu.lst and reboot.
Hey grewb, you’re wrong, I know I am :)
Yes, I’m responding to my own comment.
For some bootable ISO file my method workd, for some it does not.
My method works for Hiren’s 9.9, 10.6 and 12.0, as well as Ultimate Boot CD, and several others.
It DOES NOT work with Ubuntu 10.10, Kubuntu 10.10, nor BT4-R2.