Problem :
I can’t make a bootable USB for a Windows distribution (XP, 7 8) with a iso image from Linux terminal. I tries with dd but it worked only for Linux distributions. I also tried to make the flash drive bootable by setting the bootable flag with fdisk, mounting the .iso and flash drive, and then copying the files with cp. Is there a difference between these iso images > And if so, how do I determine if the image can be used to make a bootable usb or not ?
Solution :
If you want to only use the terminal, i would rather stick to the manual way. Let’s use Windows 7 as an example:
Note: before starting, please become root by running sudo su
Let’s prepare the USB drive for our purpose:
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdXY
If you encounter -bash: mkfs.vfat: command not found , just issue apt-get -y install dosfstools and repeat the last step.
Next, the ISO image should be mounted, in order to copy the necessary files:
mkdir /mnt/iso
mount -o loop -t udf /path_to_your_image.iso /mnt/iso
Mount the newly formatted USB stick:
mkdir /mnt/stick
mount -t auto /dev/sdXY /mnt/stick
Start copying:
cp -Rv /mnt/iso/* /mnt/stick/
(this will take a while if the image is large and the USB stick is rather slow)
Now, let’s unmount the ISO image:
umount /mnt/iso
To help the boot-loader find the disk, a dummy file should be created:
touch /mnt/stick/roxboot.tag
Now, install a multipurpose boot-loader (GRUB4DOS):
cd ~
wget http://download.gna.org/grub4dos/grub4dos-0.4.4.zip
unzip ./grub4dos-0.4.4.zip
cd grub4dos-0.4.4
./bootlace.com --no-backup-mbr --mbr-disable-floppy /dev/sdX
Note: GRUB4DOS needs a special loader file called GRLDR in order to boot successfully, so let’s copy it:
cp ~/grub4dos-0.4.4/grldr /mnt/stick/
GRUB4DOS uses a configuration file called menu.lst in order to create a boot menu and to present it to the user, so let’s create the file and a menu entry for Windows 7 installation:
touch /mnt/stick/menu.lst
echo "title Windows7 Install" > /mnt/stick/menu.lst
echo "find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /roxboot.tag" >> /mnt/stick/menu.lst
echo "chainloader /bootmgr" >> /mnt/stick/menu.lst
Unmount the USB stick:
umount /dev/sdXY
Now if you want to test it, reboot and instruct your BIOS to boot from USB by altering the boot order or by selecting your stick from the “One-time boot menu”
Note: in /dev/sdXY: X represents a letter assigned by udev when the stick is plugged, and Y a number (usually 1) since your stick has a single partition. If you have a single harddisk, then your stick should be /dev/sdb and the partition we are working on should be /dev/sdb1
P.S.: Greetings from Romania!