[syslinux] Syslinux + USB + PE 2.0

[Peter.Leenders at computacenter.com]

> Now the trick is getting ghost to let me make an image of this
> thumbdrive that actually works so I can redistribute this to my other
> co-workers.
> when I use the image boot switch, it copies off my 512meg fat32
> partition but it's not getting the boot sector for some reason and if
> i did a sector by sector
> copy i'd end up with an 8 gig ghost image, and I don't want that.
>
> Matt


...

> I've actually just distributed my vista bootsector file i made on my
> usb stick the datatraveler 8gb
> and had another fella install everything onto his sandisk 2gb, and it
> worked just fine, so I don't think
> my setup is thumbdrive specific. If so I haven't encountered one it
> hasn't worked on yet.
>
> Matt

Hello Matt,

as it seems to me you use a ghostimage of vista/vista pe  and try to
make some bootable usb stick's with it. Since the bcd-file inside the
image isn't changed you have to ensure that the mbr of your usb-sticks
have the same (belonging) disc signature. Ghost (at least older
versions) will not do this, they will create a new disc-signature for
each disks (which was was know as proper style  - before vista).

Theeasiest way for USB-stick with differnt sizes to do this is to make
a copy of the original mbr without partition table and restore it later.
Use bs=444 instead of 512 in commandline of dd for this, restore your
ghost image to the stick and copy disk signature with dd onto the stick.
You may need a full MBR-copy (512 yte size) of this new created MBR to
boot this stick with syslinux.

Peter