Unable to boot VM from USB

[rsharma]

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to boot my virtual machine (Win XP) from the bootable USB (BartPE) drive but had no success with this. I am using workstation 6.0.3 and windows XP with sp2 as host system. I have went thru bios options and did set vm to boot from flash drive. My flash drive has been detected under the virtual bios but when it is goes thru booting order then vm will just go directly to virtual hard drive. Has anyone esle tried this before?

Thanks,

[RDPetruska]

The virtual motherboard/BIOS of all guests is an Intel 440BX-compatible one, which existed long before USB boot devices. Hence, no USB boot support.

[rsharma]

Thank you, I did not know this.

[A20_user]

I believe your statement regarding USB boot devices history is not entirely correct. Long before year 2000, USB floppies have been introduced. They are bootable.

I see no technical reason for not adding USB boot support to this BIOS.

It is possible to boot Guest from an USB Mass Storage Device if you do not treat it as an USB device (directly connected to Guest), but as a Physical Disk managed by Host (tried it myself). I agree that Guest view in this scenario is different.

[jfcantin]

Hi,

I was just doing a sysprep for my Win7 vm and needed to boot to USB. I can't take the credit for it, but I found this great life saver boot loader that worked like a charm.

Have a look at this post from vladan: boot from usb image

Enjoy.

Jean-Francois

[continuum]

I always test my BartPE - USB-sticks in VMware - you need for example the PLOP-bootmanager - that then loads from ISO , loads USB-support and then you can continue to boot from BartPE

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