Boot Livestate Recovery CD from USB Stick???

[Rich_Harmer]

We're looking to do two things.

1) Boot from USB stick to access livestate recovery
2) Put a livestate image onto the USB stick for re-imaging purposes

We've used BartPE and another utility, but that doesn't work 100 percent. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!!

Rich

[Vladimir_Vucini]

Rich,

I am just guessing, but are there some tools for moving .iso image to USB (to be bootable), maybe that can help?

Regarding second question, you can just copy or directly create LSR image on USB it is supported as media in backup and also in restore mode (when you boot from CD you can access USB stick as usual).

Best regards,
Vladimir

[Rich_Harmer]

I've used a couple tools to convert the bootable Livestate CD to USB, but so far no luck. Flashboot almost does it... I'm not sure what other tweaks are necessary to do this.

For my #2, it was dependant on #1.

What I really want to do is provision HP servers using a usb stick. I want to boot Livestate from USB, and lay down my image which would also be stored on the USB.

Thanks,

Rich

[Rich_Harmer]

Using Flashboot I can get booted to the USB stick and it appears to be functioning. When you do a recovery it gets to 99 percent and fails. I'll get the exact error message and post it.

Rich

[Michael_Lopez_2]

Hi Rich,

which option did you choose in flashboot to get the usb key working ?
I already tried lot of them but wihtout success.

the best result so far for me was with :
- Convert bartpe bootable disk to bootable flash disk
- Uncheck "Don't rename i386 folder to minint...
- choose format : SuperFloppy (usb-zip boot mode)

this way, the USB stick start to boot BESR but ends with a blue screen.

thanks for your help.
Michael

[Michael_Lopez_2]

Rich,

I have already seen the same issue while staying at 99% without finishing and it was with the BESR 6.5 CD, so maybe your USB stick is working fine but there is something wrong with the v2i file.

Michael

[Rich_Harmer]

Here are the ingredients:

Livestate Recovery CD 6.0.2
Lexar 2gb Flashdrive (Also Lexmark 512 works)
HP Desktop Machine (works/boots the same on the servers)
Flashboot 1.3.0.135 (registered)
- Convert BartPE bootable
- I let it rename I386 to MiniNT even though there are registry entries that point to I386 and it might be the problem... (won't boot with this checked)

Everything boots fine.. in fact, boots faster than from CD. After you are 99 percent through the image, you get this error

VISUAL C++ Runtime Library
The program x:\minint\shell\v2i\vrisr.exe
This application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application support team.

If you explore the disk after that.. all the files are there, all the partitions are there, boot drive set, everything. It's SO CLOSE. When you boot the machine, it goes nowhere. Not sure what didn't get written, or MBR not written.. I haven't looked super close at what part failed exactly.

I emailed our Symantec rep and I'm trying to get ahold of one of the developers. We were in contact with one of them a couple months back, but my co-worker doesn't have his email address anymore.

I'll keep trying... I'd like to get this done.

[Vladimir_Vuci1]

Rich,

It looks like everything is finished and control is just about to be returned to the calling program (guess it is part of PE OS) and this is the place where it stops.

I guess that what you need is just MBR or to set partition to be active. What happens when you boot machine, just black screen with no messages? Is boot partition set to be active?

[Rich_Harmer]

I have not booted back into the OS and checked the status of the partitions after I rebooted. I will do that this afternoon.

When I boot the machine it is just back and reboots the machine (endless cycle). Usually a machine reports no OS and quits..

I'll make sure the boot partition is set to active as well.

Rich

[techno_nerd]

One thing you might be able to try if you have Lights Out, is to run the Lights Out, then copy the minint file to the thumb drive. Modify the boot.ini on the thumb drive to point to the \Minint\bootsect.dat file.

Not sure if it will work for you, but you could try it.

Thanks,

Technonerd

[Rich_Harmer]

I'll give it a shot.

So far Symantec engineers/dev won't touch this with a 20 ft pole.. ?!? Not sure why.

Rich