[negatiiv]

Hi All,

I have some old systems which have no cdrom, just USB 1.1 and Firewire 400. Installing Win 7 from PE3 would take a long time from USB 1.1, so what I have been doing is booting to PE on a USB key, then running setup off the Firewire HDD. However booting to PE from the USB key still takes quite a long time. Can I set up my firewire HDD as bootable to PE, and then when the computer boots from USB it transfers the boot process to the firewire drive? I've heard of creating a kicker cd for use in systems which don't support usb booting, but I guess in my case I would like to create a kicker usb key for use in my system which doesn't support firewire booting. Thanks!

[Tripredacus]

I've never actually used Firewire before so I have no real experience with it. What I would do, however, is see if there are any mass storage drivers for the firewire controller on that system and inject them into the boot image. Then you can keep the install.wim on the Firewire drive. You should be able to use Setup in the boot.wim (USB) to install the image that way or DISM or whatever imaging tool you would be using.

[johnhc]

negatiiv, if your machine will not boot from the FireWire, you might try Plop Boot Manager. Perhaps this is what you mean by "kicker usb key". Enjoy, John.

[jaclaz]

@johnhc
PLoP has NO support for Firewire.

@negatiiv
Yes, you can make a USB "kicker". (IF you are talking of a PE 1.x - i.e. XP/2003 based)
Unfortunately there is not much experience with Firewire around so your mileage may vary.

Start by getting the basics of the idea here:
http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=21242
the procedure is called either "XP Kansas City Shuffle" or "fake signature method" (googling for these will give you more related results).

The main issue is/will be the start setting for the firewire related drivers/services.

Doing the same for a later PE 2.x ( Vista based) or a PE 3.x (Windows 7 based) it may as well be possible, but I presume only for a "flat" build, I don't remember any previous posts/threads about these, in any case if a machine has only USB 1.1 support in BIOS or has actually only USB 1.1 chips it is so old that a later than PE 1.x would run so slow that it wouldn't be practical (slow processor and most probably a limited amount of RAM).

Easiest would probably be to do a test with UBCD4win .
http://www.ubcd4win.com/
The UBCD4win forum is down but the app by PC_user is available:
http://web.archive.o...showtopic=11375
From here:
http://web.archive.o...d4win/UBUSB.exe

jaclaz

[negatiiv]

Great, thanks, I'll read those posts about the kansas shuffle and the fake signature method.

[cdob]

negatiiv, on 14 January 2013 - 11:52 AM, said:

Installing Win 7 from PE3 would take a long time from USB 1.1, so what I have been doing is booting to PE on a USB key, then running setup off the Firewire HDD.
I've heard of creating a kicker cd for use in systems which don't support usb booting

I've done a kicker CD at PE1, but never above.
There is a batch: there are some fix filenames and txtsetup.sif is processed dynamically http://www.911cd.net...showtopic=21939
At PE3 there is no txtsetup.sif. You have to search registry services start=0 instead, and extract relating files.

I wonder: how courious are you?
Do you have fun and like to invest time. And invent a this to PE3?
Results are highly welcome.

Or boot a basic PE3 (default \boot and boot.wim) from USB 1.1, but read install.wim from Firewire drive?
As for a one time solution, this seems to be a more straightforward approach.
You use this already: how long does it take booting from USB1.1?