How do I create a bootable USB on Ubuntu from Hiren's Boot CD ISO for Windows?

Solution 1:

Unetbootin does the job of making a bootable USB, but for recent versions of Hiren's CD to work, a small fix must be made for the menu to work:

• Open the Software Center and install UNetbootin .

• Create the bootable USB using the Diskimage option and selecting the downloaded ISO.

• After the USB is created, mount it in Nautilus (just click the USB drive icon), go into the HBCD folder, rename the isolinux.cfg file to syslinux.cfg and copy it to the root of the USB, overwriting the existing file. Change the first line of syslinux.cfg from DEFAULT /HBCD/Boot/menu.c32 to DEFAULT menu.c32.

Now the USB boots and menu works fine :)

Solution 2:

None of the below methods will work. Although you will get a bootable USB, it doesn't chainload anything out of the Grub Menu. This is especially true for the 'revised' edition of Hiren's Boot CD (the one with the mini-version of Windows XP)

Here is the correct procedure:

Insert your USB drive into your PC and start Ubuntu's partition Manager. Format the drive to FAT32, primairy partition and give a nice label. While you are at it, note the device's mount location (for example /dev/sdb)

When it is done, close the partition manager and start a terminal.

sudo grub-install /dev/device location

Where 'device location' is the location of your USB drive you noted earlier.

Now place the Hirens Boot CD iso-file in a new folder. Right-click the file and choose 'extract here' When it is done, delete the iso file and copy all the rest of the content to the root your USB drive.

There should be 1 folder called HBCD on the drive now, and 4 small other files. Now open the folder called HBCD and copy the files 'grldr' and 'menu.lst' to the root of the drive. Be sure to copy them, do not cut.

That is it, you're done. It should work now as a bootable USB drive aswel as a tool you can use inside a MS Windows environment.