Windows Bootable USB

Extracting the ISO to USB

First well need a few bits installed. I'm doing this on a Debian host but I'm sure the packages are there for EL or any other flavour ;-)

su -c `apt-get install ntfs-3g gparted -y

So then we need to clean up the USB stick with gparted.

Format it to ntfs using all the space.(Make sure you format the right drive, otherwise you'll FUBAR your OS) and make a note of the drive number.

Then we need a temporary mount point:

$ mkdir /tmp/windows_usb

Now we mount our ISO

$ mount windows_iso.iso /tmp/windows_usb

Now copy over then contents of your ISO to wherever your USB key is mounted, mines in 
/media/37265723dhgsdhg23857/

$ cp -r /tmp/windows_usb/* /media/

Will probably take a while depending on speed of USB key.

Now were going to need a little tool called ms-sys, and it probably wont be in your standard OS 
repo's, but it's at sourceforge and you'll also need to install some tools for building stuff from source:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential module-assistant gettext-y

$ wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ms-sys/ms-sys-2.3.0.tar.gz

$ tar xvf ms-sys-2.3.0.tar.gz ; cd ms-sys-2.3.0 ; make ; sudo make install

If all is well you should have no errors and be ready to write a master boot record to the USB drive:

$ ms-sys -7 /dev/sd{?}

Replace {?} with the disk number of your device (noted from gparted)

Now you should have a bootable Windows USB key!

Windows XP SP2 Windows Update Error 0x80244019

So I had to build a Windows XP machine for some testing I was carrying out tonight and came across Error 0x80244019 when trying to run Windows Update.

It turns out the Microsoft have blocked IE6 from accessing the Windows Update web site and downloading the Windows Update 3.1 Active X controls.

So what you need to do is, download and install IE8 and Windows Update Services in the following order:

1. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 (IE8)
DOWNLOAD
2. Reboot Machine.
3. Download Windows Update Agent
DOWNLOAD
4. Save the .exe file to your C: drive
5. Click Start, and then click Run. 
6. Type "C:\WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe /wuforce"  then click OK
7. Install Windows Update agent.
8. Restart the PC and try Windows Updates again.


You should now be able to install the Windows Update Active X control and begin installing the mammoth amount of updates that your XPSP2 build will be missing.

HTH