How to create a bootable USB flash drive with your own programs. Applications for creating bootable USB flash drives

But what to do if you have several computers or laptops at home with different operating systems installed. Or friends often ask you to reinstall Windows or install a new version of it. Of course, you can create a bootable USB flash drive every time. You can also buy several flash drives and install various programs on them. But it is much easier to choose this option - creating a multiboot flash drive with different versions of Windows and utilities. This is what will be discussed in this article.

What you need

So, what do you need for this? Of course, you must have all the necessary ISO images that you want to burn onto it: various operating systems and utilities. This could be Windows XP, 7, 8 and others; Dr.Web LiveCD or Kaspersky Rescue Disk – for checking your computer for viruses, Victoria – for fixing hard drive errors, Acronis Disk Director – for dividing your hard drive into partitions and others. You can download them from the Internet, or make images from disks, you can read about this by following the link.

We will also need a special program with which we will create a multiboot flash drive, and, of course, the USB drive itself. Choose its volume based on what you will be recording. If this is a set of different programs, 1-4 GB will be enough. If you want to make a multiboot flash drive with multiple OSes and add programs to it, take a flash drive with a memory capacity of 8 GB or more.

As an example, in this article we will make a multiboot flash drive with Windows 8 and the Victoria program. I took a 4 GB flash drive. We will use the free program WinSetupFromUSB.

Downloading the required utility

You can download the program from the official website. Write “WinSetupFromUSB” in the search engine and follow the link shown in the figure below.

We will download the latest version of the program at the time of writing. Follow the appropriate link.

Click on the blue “Download” button.

Formatting a flash drive

The next thing we will do is format the flash drive using standard Windows tools, which will be bootable. Copy the necessary files from it, as all information from the device will be completely deleted.

Insert it into your computer or laptop, and you need to use a USB 2.0 port. Go to “Computer”, right-click on it and select from the context menu "Format".

An information window will appear informing you that all data will be destroyed, click OK.

When the USB drive is formatted, a corresponding window will open. Click “OK” in it and close the format utility.

Operating system entry

Unpack the downloaded archive with the WinSetupFromUSB program and run the file “WinSetupFromUSB_1-6”.

First of all, let’s write an image with the Windows 8 operating system onto our multiboot flash drive.

In the program window, in the section, select the flash drive that we formatted. In the “Add to USB disk” section, check the box "Windows Vista/7/8/10/Server 2008/2012 based ISO"

An Explorer window will open. Find the desired image on your computer, in the example this is the image of the Windows 8 operating system, and click “Open”.

Click "GO".

After the process is completely completed, the “Job done” window will appear.

I only have a 4 GB flash drive, so I won’t be able to write many operating systems onto it. If you need to add Windows Vista, 7, 10 to a multiboot flash drive, repeat all the steps described above. To add Windows XP, in the “Add to USB disk” section, check the box "Windows 2000/XP/2003 Setup". Each time, select the same flash drive on which you recorded images earlier.

Recording programs

Now let's add a program to the multiboot flash drive to check and fix Victoria hard drive errors.

Run WinSetupFromUSB and in the section "USB disk selection and format tools" select our flash drive. Next, in the “Add to USB disk” section, put a tick in the box "Linux ISO/Other Grub4dos compatible ISO" and click on the button with three dots.

Through Explorer, find the program image on your computer and click “Open”. Then an information window will appear, click “OK” in it, or it will disappear itself after 10 seconds.

Click “GO” and wait for the program to be written to the flash drive.

To add other programs you need to the multiboot flash drive, repeat all the steps described above. Select the desired utility image each time.

Examination

After you add all the images of operating systems and programs to the flash drive, let's look at the result - open the boot menu of the flash drive in the QEMU virtual machine.

To do this, in the program window, click on the “Refresh” button, then check the “Test in QEMU” box and click “GO”.

You can see what the boot menu looks like after each addition of an OS or program to the flash drive.

In the example, the boot menu of the flash drive looks like this. The USB flash drive contains Windows 8 OS and the Victoria program. You will see a different list depending on what you upload to it.

XBoot is a simple free program with which you can easily make a multiboot disk or flash drive by recording the necessary images of operating systems and utilities on them. A bootable flash drive or disk can be useful if your computer stops turning on due to a crash or virus infection, or if you want to reinstall the operating system.

Despite the English-language menu, the program interface will be understandable to any user. Add the required ISO images of operating systems and programs to the main XBoot window. After this, you can immediately create a multiboot flash drive from them, or make a multiboot image that can be burned to a DVD using a disc burning program.

With XBoot you can add working versions of Windows and Linux operating systems to a bootable flash drive or disk simultaneously. The program will also allow you to select the bootloader type ISO Emulation or Grub4DOS.

Download XBoot for free You can follow the link given at the end of the article. Or find the official website on the Internet, go to the “Download” tab, and click on the green arrow to download.

There is no need to install the program on your computer, just extract the file from the archive to any folder on your computer (it is advisable that the path to it is not written in Russian letters) and run it. The main program window will open. At the top there are three menu items, just below the main tabs for working with the program:

“Create Multiboot USB/ISO” – will allow you to create a multiboot flash drive or image that can be burned to disk;

“QEMU” – designed for testing created images on a virtual machine;

“Edit MultiBoot USB” – here you can edit created multiboot flash drives.

Drag the required ISO images into the main program window; you can also add images using the menu “File” - “Open”. If the following window pops up, then you need to indicate in it which bootloader to use for the image.

If you are adding an image that is based on Windows, select from the list "Add using Grub4dos ISO image Emulation", for Linux, select the “Linux Ubuntu” option. Then click the “Add this file” button.

If you have not yet downloaded images to your computer, you can look at the options that the program itself offers. Go to menu “File” – “Download”. Select the image from the drop-down list and click “Open Download Webpage”. An Internet site will open from where you can download the ISO image.

To make a multiboot flash drive, select a flash drive whose memory capacity would be larger than all the images added to the program - you can see this in the upper right corner. Then insert it into your computer and format it. To do this, you can use the free program Rufus. To create a multiboot flash drive with the selected images, click “Create USB”.

In the next window you need to select a flash drive and bootloader type. If you only have Windows images, select “Grub4dos”, if Windows and Linux – “Syslinux”. Click OK.

On the "QEMU" tab you can test the recorded image or flash drive. If the image is saved on your computer, click “Browse” and find it using Explorer. If you have a flash drive, select it from the drop-down list and click “Boot”. After this, a virtual machine will start in which you can check the recorded images.

On the "Edit MultiBoot USB" tab, first select the USB device. Then you can either edit the bootloader “Edit Config Files”, or reinstall it “Reinstall Bootloader”.

As you can see, the free XBoot program has many advantages. Download it to your computer and get started right away.

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Previously, new computer programs or applications came on CDs. But recently, most computers are not equipped with drives for reading them. More popular is installing software via the Internet. But what should you do if the operating system fails or you need to reinstall a new version of it on another computer? In this case, a flash drive will help, on which the utility for automatically loading the operating system will be installed. It is possible to make a bootable USB flash drive yourself.

Why do you need a bootable USB flash drive with utilities?

For a computer to function properly, it is not enough to install an operating system on it. For correct operation of all functional units in it, correct display of information, playback of audio and video content, drivers or codecs will be required. There are universal collections of codecs for each operating system that work on computers of different configurations, power, types of processors, video cards, input/output devices, and peripheral equipment. When installing an OS from a bootable USB flash drive, you must install all these utilities.

Creating a multiboot flash drive

The solution to the problem is possible by using a flash memory device that is connected to a USB port. To install Windows and all the necessary utilities for its correct operation, you will need a 16 gigabyte (GB) flash drive. To create a multiboot flash drive for Windows XP/Windows XPE/Vista/7/Windows 7PE/8/10, a flash memory capacity of up to 32 GB is useful. A Windows 10 multiboot flash drive is created using specialized programs: Acronis Disk Director & True Image, RMPrepUSB, Bootice, WinSetupFromUSB, XBoot, FiraDisk_integrator.

What you will need

To create a recovery flash drive, you need a copy (or image) of the OS installation disk. To create it you will need the UltraISO program, administrator rights and a disk with the original OS. After downloading, installing and launching, you need to select the location of the image. The UltraISO Wizard will create an ISO image with the OS. Next, select “Burn hard disk image” and create a bootable flash drive. This multiboot flash drive will need to be filled with the necessary service programs, and a standard set of them will need to be downloaded - antiviruses, codecs, backup tools.

Program for creating a multiboot flash drive

It is difficult to create a separate MultiBoot USB Flash for each operating system. It is possible in Windows 8 to create a multiboot flash drive from the command line, but this can lead to errors. Therefore, several utilities have been created that automate these actions, which have the ability to additionally integrate several operating systems, add antivirus programs to the installer, the programs you need, and batch install this entire set onto a multiboot flash drive. Among them the most interesting are:

RMPrepUSB is a universal multi-booter for flash drives, launching them in MS-DOS, FreeDOS, WinPE 1, 2 or 3, BartPE, XP, Win 7, Win 8.x, Win 10, Linux. Works with different file systems - FAT16, FAT32, NFTS. Facilitates checking flash memory, formatting hard and flash drives, creating backup images of a bootable flash drive, and has many auxiliary functions in interactive mode.
Bootice is a useful program for reinstalling the OS on computers without an optical drive; it has the functions of formatting and splitting the amount of flash memory into several partitions, changing the way the system boots, and you can rename the bootloader.
WinSetupFromUSB is a free software product for creating bootable Flash USB for Windows and Linux systems with a simple graphical interface. It has the functions of formatting and marking flash memory, copying installation files from distributions, and final testing of the created bootloader.
XBoot is a free program for transferring images of operating systems, codecs, and programs to a flash drive. Its advantages are the ability to create a boot disk simultaneously for Windows and Linux OS, and choose the type of boot loader ISO Emulation or Grub4DOS. The downside is the menu is in English.
YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator – a small utility for creating a bootable USB flash, has a simple English interface with descriptions of distributions and recommendations for different computer configurations, offers links for downloading antiviruses, codecs, and drivers.
FiraDisk_integrator is a multifunctional boot loader, has the ability to integrate all versions of Windows of different assemblies, there is a choice of localization of installed software according to the interface language, simple creation of an image from all distribution sources loaded into the SSD folder.

How to make a flash drive multiboot with MultiBoot USB - step-by-step instructions

When installing a multiboot program, some antiviruses may block this action. It is worth disabling them temporarily or adding this program to exceptions. To create an emergency flash drive, you must complete the following steps:

Formatting a USB drive for the bootloader format.
Installing the bootloader.
Adding operating system images (files with the .iso extension).
Copying files.
Testing the resulting tool.

Formatting a USB drive

Preparing a multiboot flash drive to turn it into a bootable tool starts with formatting it. Move all the information you need from its memory to other media - formatting will completely clear it. To format, you need to do the following:

Launch HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.
Select your drive from the list.
Specify File system – NTFS if files larger than 4 GB will be installed. FAT32 markup must be left if you intend to work with computers based on BIOS UEFI.
In Format Options, you should check Quick Format - quick formatting.
Click Start.

Installing the bootloader

Several options for utilities that will download all OS distributions and service files are discussed above. To use them you need:

Copy the installation module of your chosen bootloader to a formatted USB drive.
Then run this installer.
Choose a name for your flash drive.
Click Install.

After successful installation of the program, a message will appear on the screen confirming the installation of the boot utility on the computer. A message will be displayed on the screen asking you to start it. If up to this point you have created a database with all the necessary distributions and programs on your hard drive, you can check the Start program box and click the Finish button.

Adding operating system images

To add images of different operating systems to a multiboot flash drive, you need to prepare them in the root folder on your computer’s hard drive. This will be several files with an iso extension. Using a bootloader like WinSetupFromUSB, you can make a multiboot flash drive for Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and Linux. To do this you need:

Select the name of the flash drive from the list.
Check the boxes next to the required operating systems in the list, for example – Windows 2000/Xp/2003 Setup.
Specify the location of the mounted images.
Click Go.

Copying utilities and files

After transferring operating system images, you should copy the installation files of all the utilities and programs from our list necessary for the system to work on a flash drive. To do this, in the WinSetupFromUSB program:

Uncheck the Auto format it with FBinst checkbox.
Select the item Linux ISO/Other Grub4dos compatible ISO by clicking the button on the right.
In Explorer we find the folder with program images, select all the programs in turn and click “Open”.
We make sure that they are named correctly in the Boot menu name.
Click Go and see the process of adding the selected utility to the bootable flash drive.

To create a recovery-reanimation multiboot flash drive, the following basic utilities can be included in the installation package, which can always be changed, removed or replaced with new versions:

Windows distributions versions 8.1, 10 and XP;
Paragon Hard Disk Manager – disk space allocation manager ;
AOMEI Backupper Standard – free backup;
K-Lite Codec Pack – universal codec package;
Kaspersky Rescue 10 – Kaspersky antivirus;
DrWeb LiveCD – Doctor Web antivirus;
7-Zip – archiver of files and folders;
Recuva – file recovery utility;
RegeditPE – registry editing utility;
Symantec Ghost v11.0 – for archiving and restoring personal computer data;
Elcomsoft System Recovery Pro v3.0 Build 466 – the purpose of the utility is to restore user access to Windows accounts and Microsoft applications;
Universal Boot Disk v3.7 – servicing NTFS drives in MS-DOS;
NT Password & Registry Editor – change the password and the ability to edit the Windows XP registry;
Active@ Boot Disk Professional v2.1 – will help you recover and edit deleted files;
QuickTech Pro v5.8 – setup, diagnostics of the computer and its components;
MemTest86+ v4.20 – testing RAM;
MHDD v4.6 – checking hard drives;
Victoria v3.52 – IDE and Serial HDD maintenance;
HDD Regenerator v2011 – eliminating physical damage to hard drives;
Reanimator – fast liveCD for data recovery and work environment repair;
Alkid LiveUSB – universal system recovery utility;
Acronis Disk Director & True Image – check hard drives;
Elcomsoft System Recovery – viewing, changing, deleting passwords for accounts in Windows OS of all editions;
Daemon Tools is a popular virtual CD-ROM;
DOS-Navigator – console file manager for OS/2 and DOS;
Alcohol 120% is a program for copying and virtualizing disks.

Testing

After creating a multiboot flash drive, you need to check its functionality. To do this, you can use the Test in QEMU utility in WinSetupFromUSB. To do this, do the following:

check the box next to Test in QEMU;
press GO;
the program itself will check for the presence of all elements and finally display a list on the computer screen under the heading “Set of boot images and utilities for working with hard drive partitions”;
Below is a list of all operating systems, programs and utilities;
If some utilities are not installed, you must repeat the installation process.

Burning a bootable USB flash drive using the RMPrepUSB program

The first step is to run RMPrepUSB. Then you need to go to the dialog box, check in the top window whether the multiboot flash drive is defined. Then we do the following steps:

Size – enter MAX.
Volume label – the name of the flash drive in the OS.
On the right, check “No questions asked.”
In the “Boot sector” section, select WinPEv2/WinPEv3/Vista/Win7 bootable (CC4).
File system and options – NTFS.
To the right you need to select the option Boot as HDD (C: 2PTNS).
Check the “Copy system files from the following folder...” checkbox.
An explorer will open in “Browse”, in which you need to select the Easy2Boot archive and click OK.
If you click “Prepare disk”, formatting of the flash drive starts, which must be prepared for this.
Click “Install Grub4DOS”.
We answer “No” to the MBR request.
In the GRLDR ALREADY EXISTS window, press the OK button.
After that, we manually transfer the boot programs to the USB flash drive into the MAIN MENU and UTILITIES Menu folders.
To complete the creation, open the menu item Drive->Make All Files on Drive Contiguous.
By launching the RMPrepUSB emulator and pressing the F11 key, you can check its functionality.

If you copied all your OS distributions to the MAINMENU folder on a flash drive, then they will be reflected directly in this menu. The UTILITIES Menu item will display service utilities and computer maintenance programs. This completes the process of creating a multiboot flash drive using this program. To select the OS and programs to install, you need to navigate through the menu and select the utilities needed for installation.

Multi-flash drive in Bootice - creation procedure

It is known that Bootice is a utility for creating a multiboot flash memory card. You can download Bootice from the official website of the developer. The utility must be unpacked, and after launching the program:

In the Destination Disk item, select the flash drive that must first be prepared.
You should click Process MBR (master boot record).
Select GRUB4DOS 0.4.5c/0.4.6a (grldr.mbr).
Click Install/Config.
Click Save to disk to write all the information to the flash drive.
For Linux systems, SUSLINUX 4.06/5.01 (FAT/FAT32/NTFS) should be installed.
Click Install/Config.
Select SYSLINUX 5.01.
Click confirmation - OK.
After completing these steps, the multiboot flash drive will be ready.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive with multiple operating systems in WinSetupFromUsb

After launching the WinSetupFromUSB utility, the SFX archive will be unpacked, the program will start and a menu will open, at the top of which we find our flash drive in the drop-down list. Your steps will be:

Format the media – check Auto format it with FBinst, then – NTFS.
Check the box for Linux ISO/Other Grub4dos compatible ISO.
Press the GO button.
The flash drive is being formatted.
In the next step, we sequentially select items from the Add to USB disk list and press the GO button - the OS distribution kits are transferred to a multiboot flash drive.

To randomly select downloadable programs, select Linux ISO/Other Grub4dos compatible ISO and click on the button with the image of three dots on the right, an explorer opens in which we select the utilities and programs we need. Then we add all the ISO images in exactly the same way. The Test in QEMU item will help you check the recorded images. To control, we boot from this multiboot flash drive and check its boot menu.

Utility for creating a multiboot USB drive Xboot

The Xboot interface is simple - to create a multi-boot device for installing and restoring the OS, you need to do the following:

To add images, you need to drag iso files into the program window. At the same time, in a green window with the question “How to perceive this image?” when adding Windows images, you must specify Add using Grub4dos ISO image Emulation.
If you are installing a Unix system, then use Utility-Ubuntu.
In addition to OS images, you can add utility images. The program has links, to access which click File->Download. Select utilities and download.
After clicking Create ISO, the program will ask for the path to save the image file and offer to check it in the virtual machine.

FiraDisk_integrator script for resuscitation flash drive with multiple OS

To start creating a multiboot flash drive using the FiraDisk_integrator utility:

Video

What you need

As an example, in this article we will make a multiboot flash drive with Windows 8 and the Victoria program. I took a 4 GB flash drive. We will use the free program WinSetupFromUSB.

Downloading the required utility

You can download the program from the official website. Write “WinSetupFromUSB” in the search engine and follow the link shown in the figure below.

We will download the latest version of the program at the time of writing. Follow the appropriate link.

Click on the blue “Download” button.

Formatting a flash drive

Insert it into your computer or laptop, and you need to use a USB 2.0 port. Go to “Computer”, right-click on it and select from the context menu "Format".

An information window will appear informing you that all data will be destroyed, click OK.

When the USB drive is formatted, a corresponding window will open. Click “OK” in it and close the format utility.

Operating system entry

Unpack the downloaded archive with the WinSetupFromUSB program and run the file “WinSetupFromUSB_1-6”.

First of all, let’s write an image with the Windows 8 operating system onto our multiboot flash drive.

In the program window, in the section, select the flash drive that we formatted. In the “Add to USB disk” section, check the box "Windows Vista/7/8/10/Server 2008/2012 based ISO"

An Explorer window will open. Find the desired image on your computer, in the example this is the image of the Windows 8 operating system, and click “Open”.

Click "GO".

After the process is completely completed, the “Job done” window will appear.

Recording programs

Now let's add a program to the multiboot flash drive to check and fix Victoria hard drive errors.

Through Explorer, find the program image on your computer and click “Open”. Then an information window will appear, click “OK” in it, or it will disappear itself after 10 seconds.

Click “GO” and wait for the program to be written to the flash drive.

To add other programs you need to the multiboot flash drive, repeat all the steps described above. Select the desired utility image each time.

Examination

After you add all the images of operating systems and programs to the flash drive, let's look at the result - open the boot menu of the flash drive in the QEMU virtual machine.

To do this, in the program window, click on the “Refresh” button, then check the “Test in QEMU” box and click “GO”.

You can see what the boot menu looks like after each addition of an OS or program to the flash drive.

In the example, the boot menu of the flash drive looks like this. The USB flash drive contains Windows 8 OS and the Victoria program. You will see a different list depending on what you upload to it.

Installing different operating systems on the same computer can have different purposes: from purely educational to purely professional. Windows users who want to learn Linux do not want to part with their familiar “habitat” of Windows. It is important for them to organize their work on the computer in such a way as to alternately use one or the other “Axis”.

This can be done either by installing an emulator of one system in the system environment of another, or using multiboot, when the choice of the system to be launched is carried out on the computer’s stratum.

Until some time, we all believed that the only carrier of system files could be a hard drive or, in extreme cases, floppy drives that are now out of fashion. The advent of flash drives shattered these notions. Today you can install and run the OS directly from a flash drive. It wasn't always like this. USB drives have recently acquired the technical characteristics that allow this to happen.

The first models of such media had too few read-write cycles before they failed. Therefore, installing them on a flash drive was almost pointless. The only area of application for such bootable flash drives was to install MS-DOS on them in order to gain access to the resources of a computer with a more powerful operating system.

Modern USB drives have become truly long-lived. Their large memory and high performance allow them to be used as an alternative to hard drives. In the BIOS of modern PCs, you can set to boot not only from a hard disk or floppy, but also from a flash drive.

Further, as we go along, we will look at all these possibilities and find out how to create a multiboot flash drive. That is, one that combines the two technologies discussed above. The subject of our note is not only the creation of a multiboot Windows 7 flash drive, but also some similar tasks.

Creating multiboot media: method one

First, let's answer the question: why might this be needed? Several answers can be given. Well, for example, if you want to have a universal installer on hand for several operating systems at once. On such media you can simultaneously place MS-DOS (several varieties), a Windows installer, a Linux installer, and so on. Then you don’t have to dig around looking for the right distribution - everything is at your fingertips at any time.

Another reason: you want a portable OS with your favorite programs. This is very convenient: just plug the flash drive into any computer, set the correct boot order in the BIOS, and now you are in your usual working environment. The third reason: to create a recovery flash drive, that is, one that is used to restore a “crashed” machine.

In each of the described cases, the procedure for creating and configuring the media will be different. Therefore, we will begin our story with how to create a multiboot flash drive of the installation type. That is, one with which you can install or restore several systems of the Windows family at once. Let's say we want to include distributions of the following operating systems:

ISO image of the "seven".
WinXP ISO image.
An image of a recovery disk, for example, an RBCD 8.0 disk, which can be easily found on torrent storage sites.

In theory, all this can be done manually using multi-booters like GRUB4DOS. But this will require studying its rather extensive specification. The average user is somehow not comfortable plunging into these jungles.

Although this may seem interesting to an advanced user, most will want to achieve the result, so to speak, with little expense. Moreover, the result will be essentially the same. To solve our problem, we will use one useful utility: the WinSetupFromUSB program.

You can download the utility from here: http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/downloads/ - that is, from the website of the manufacturer of this program. Those who wish to familiarize themselves with the instructions in Russian can visit the following address: http://remontka.pro/winsetupfromusb/. We will create a multiboot flash drive like this:

This concludes the description of how the WinSetupFromUSB utility works.

We have succeeded in creating a multiboot flash drive; we can begin to consider related issues.

Windows 7 on USB

LiveCD technology has long made its way into the hearts of users. Among Linux-oids, this approach is common. It is enough to carry a disc with your favorite Linux distribution with you everywhere so as not to have problems with its absence on your computer. True, writing to a disc is excluded, but for many purposes the reading function is sufficient. The system boots from the CD into the PC's memory, and most of the functions of a full-fledged OS become available.

Until recently, Windows users practically did not do this. But with the advent of fast and bulky USB sticks, their turn has come. Live USB professes the same paradigm as LiveCD, only the storage medium is not a blank, but a flash drive. We will tell you below how to prepare a Windows 7 flash drive with a full-fledged “axis” on board.

The first Windows that allowed installation on media other than a hard drive was a version of XP called WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment) - it was an extremely minimal, although quite fast, version of Windows.

This version was distributed by Microsoft itself, and therefore no claims were made against it as some kind of inferior product. Moreover, it was this “distro” that became the basis for a wide variety of portable homemade products. In order to expand WinPE to the limits determined by the developer - that is, to include in LiveCD drivers, Windows components or external programs missing in WinPE, it was proposed to use special software, like the BartPE utility and others of the same kind.

BartPE, which has not been developed for a long time, is not suitable for illustrative purposes. Moreover, we intend to deal not with XP at all, but with the seventh version. A modern alternative to BartPE is the WinBuilder program, which we now turn to.

LiveUSB using WinBuilder

Win7PE will serve as the source material for building a mobile Windows 7 distribution, but for now we’ll tell you where to get WinBuilder itself. You can download it from its home page on the Internet: http://winbuilder.net/.

By delving into the depths of the site, you can find any information on the practical use of this program, but you won’t need it, since we will describe the process of working with it in sufficient detail. Before you start, here's what you need to do:

Next we need the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). This almost 2 GB image can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5753. Then run the package installer under the name StartCD.exe. We don't need all this product. We only need its individual files from the \Windows AIK\Tools\x86\ folder. Here is a list of these files:

bcdboot.exe
imagex.exe
wimgapi.dll
wimmount.inf
wimmount.sys
wimserv.exe

All these files need to be copied to the WinBuilder subdirectory (in our case, to the C:\WB\Projects\Tools\Win7PE_SE\x86\ folder). You should also copy the bcdedit.exe file from the \Windows\System32 folder there. Drivers for the future system need to be downloaded from this address: http://driverpacks.net/driverpacks/latest.

Additionally, we install VirtualBox - we will need this virtual machine to test the assembly. At this point, the preparatory procedures are completed, and you can begin generating the system.

Generation of a portable version of the "seven"

Details of further actions:

As a result, we will get a “bare” axis with the most reduced functionality and the complete absence of “spillies” like “Aero”.

You can fill the assembly with content using the recommendations of the next paragraph of our story.

Assembly modification

The large number of nodes in the tree on the left allows for very flexible configuration of the resulting product. You can change almost everything, from the default screen resolution, bootloader theme, to including plugins in the future Windows Explorer.

To add documents and media content, you can use the interface of the “Additional files” node, however, you will not be able to include the user program in the distribution package this way. Aero, wallpaper and a panel with gadgets can be connected in a Tweeks connection.

Enabling applications is possible, but more labor intensive. To make this task easier, the developers have released many scripts for implementing a wide variety of programs into the assembly. You can download these scripts at the following address: http://reboot.pro/forum/65/. The finished script is placed in the C:\WB\Projects\Win7PE_SE\Apps folder or in any of its subdirectories.

If a ready-made script is not found on the site, you can make it yourself using the MakeScript tool located on the site http://reboot.pro/508/. You shouldn’t give this program installers; it’s better to let it eat the portable version of the software:

Otherwise, an unimaginable amount of garbage will be generated in the registry. The MakeScript program has quite flexible settings. Check them out in the documentation or look for a description on the Internet.

In the simplest case, it all comes down to specifying the exe file of the portable version of the desired program, indicating its name and clicking on the large “Make It” button on the left of the screen.

Transfer everything to USB

So far we haven't said anything about how to transfer all this to a flash drive. In general, the program generates a ready-made ISO image of the system directly in the C:\WB folder.

We already know how to transfer such images to a USB drive. For this, we will need the knowledge gained in the first paragraphs of our story.

So, the circle is closed, and we essentially have nothing more to discuss.