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Boot a Dead PC with Nothing but a Thumb Drive

techweb.com — The USB key drive —also known as a flash or thumb drive—is most commonly deployed as a storage or backup utility. But with a few simple conversion steps, you can transform any key drive into a full-blown rescue and recovery tool. In this Recipe, I'll take you through those steps.

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  • aholverson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3This is great... we just got 20, $20 - 1GB flash drives and need something to do with them!
    • chrono13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23Here is a link to the whole article on one page: http://www.techweb.com/article/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=192700746&site_section=2300021

      And from the article:

      "To be fair, there are a few drawbacks to the USB approach. Here are three of the worst problems I've spotted:

      1. Not all USB devices boot.
      2. Not all BIOSes boot USB devices.
      3. Not all USB devices that should boot, will boot."

      A business card live-cd of Damn Small Linux, combined with a thumbdrive for "mydsl" apps and settings is still a lot more versatile than USB-booting.

      As an example, there was a laptop I recently had to work on with one single usb 1.1 port. No floppy, no CD-Rw, no wireless, no network card of any kind.
      2 gigs of data to pull off.
      64mb RAM - Knoppix and other live CD solutions are out of the question.
      A system this old obviously will not boot from USB.

      I had DSL on a business card CD and my 1gig thumbdrive. DSL did just fine and I was able to pull 2 gigs of data off with ease (two transfers).

      Linux live CD's are an indispensable tool in almost any data-recovery situation.
    • squegie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@chrono

      I've used DSL and Trinity Rescue Kit. While you can certainly build your own DSL distro, I really like TRK for these situations. I boot up trk in an updated clean Windows XP system, do all the updates to build a new iso (which has the full NTFS capabilities) and keep that around.

      And if you're still missing something, you can then add to it.

      Just my $0.02
  • Kharisma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Sorta depends on what's making it malfunction...
    • pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Indeed. if it's dead because it was hit by a bus, a USB key is not going to help.
    • chrono13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"if it's dead because it was hit by a bus"

      And I thought I was the only one.

      Damnit. I hate when the bus thing happens.
    • RandomGuySteve, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I gotta get a better office. This whole freeway deal seems crowded, and it gets hot in the summer.

      Plus, like the above posts mention, random bus attacks. Somehow I still manage.
  • smb3d, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Here's a link to a handy HP utility that will make most USB thumb drives bootable. It really helps when you don't have a floppy drive, and your BIOS supports USB boot.

    http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/locate/69_6073.html

    • rockets, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You need to be running Windows first !!!!
  • dopesick, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0I find it hilarious that if a unit won't boot (lets say via a dead IDE controller or scsi if you prefer) that a USB boot up has a rats ass chance of helping you in the long run of getting the unit operational again.

    The only way I can see a forseeable use is to corrupt a units security to gain access to it locally.
    • chrono13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"The only way I can see a forseeable use is to corrupt a units security to gain access to it locally."

      My friend had a bad CD drive in his laptop. He also had Windows and it wouldn't boot.

      We got Knoppix running - but not for long. The CD drive quickly chewed (almost literally) the Knoppix CD to a completely unusable state.

      USB booting allowed access and backup of his documents and transferred them to his other computer.

      We were lucky that it was new enough to boot from USB, otherwise it would have taken a bit more effort to save his data.

      Wait a second...

      "The only..forseeable use is to corrupt a units security to gain access to it locally."

      What the hell does that even mean? Most live CD's give you complete, unrestricted local access anyway. What are you talking about "corrupt a units security"? What exactly would you corrupt to gain any higher access than a vanilla live cd/usb doesn't already give you?
    • vertigoblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1all you would have had to do is take out his old hard drive and access it on another computer or desktop... but recovery through linux is fun, and it looks cool, especially when you do a house call and your getting paid by the hour.
    • Frankie4Fingers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think what he means is you can use a USB or CD to boot up the computer and reset the Administrator's password and get past Windows security. Normally windows boots up and you need to put in a password to move on, but if you boot to the thumb drive you can bypass the normal windows boot up and do whatever you want with the security.
  • Roger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Too bad alot of computers can't boot from USB.
    • DigeratiPrime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yup this is inaccurate. 'dead pc != hosed windows'
  • IcanFLY, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I personally like to use PXE to network boot machines using RIP Linux. It has come in handy quite a lot on my laptop with no CD or floppy drive.

    I use tftpd32 on windows to do PXE and it is pretty simple and straightforward.
    - Download RIP Linux (the PXE download) and extract it to a directory
    - Download tftpd32 and extract the .exe to inside the RIP Linux directory
    - It is probably a good idea to unplug the host machine from a network for the boot if a DHCP server might wreck havoc on your network
    - Connect the two machines
    - Start tftpd32 and go to the DHCP server tab
    - assign a base address for the leases
    - set the size of pool (1 might be a good idea)
    - set the boot file to pxelinux.0
    - set the sub-net mask
    - hit Save and the server is up and running
    - Boot the target machine and it should start the RIP Linux menu if PXE works.
    - close tftpd32 to stop the DHCP server

    Don't forget about firewalls and the like if it's not working.. it should be able to give out a DHCP address to any computer normally too, as a way to test it works.

    http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/
    http://tftpd32.jounin.net/
  • mobilehavoc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why not just use a Linux LiveCD? Nearly all PCs can boot off a CD/DVD and you'll get an entire full-fledged OS you can use to salvage data, or whatever else you want to do?
  • digitallysick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1linux live disks are great, especially with g partd
  • RobbieF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Having the ability to boot from a USB device has changed the way I do one particular tedious task on a weekly basis: Re-imaging student machines.

    Essentially, I boot into PC-DOS to get the NIC working and call a Ghost command. in the command parameters, it specifies the session name (which I have a script to change). Ghost automatically uses that session name to go to my GhostCast server and grab its image. The boot process takes like 10 seconds, and as soon as it begins, I can move on to the next machine. It's wonderful:)

    I used to use floppies to do this... but that took literally minutes to boot, and then it needed a second floppy!

    Bootable CDs had two problems... couldn't easily change the Ghost Session name or parameters once I'd written a CD, and for some reason, that version of my experiment still wanted the CD after ghost launched.

    So yes, I love my little flash drive.
  • MidKnighteh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Just a little thing my son did. He went with a usb thumbdrive, with a keylogger on it, and went to La Maison des Jeunes, place for young kids, and put it on a computer there, even though this computer had all kinds of protection already installed. Well he got someones password to Runescape, bragged about it cause he was young, and someone else took the info and used it of course. It was just a hassle for me though afterwards, having to straighten things all out. Just a comment on usb, maybe a warning for others....:o)
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