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

Trying to create a Hiren's BootCD on a USB. Not needing anything else such as a dual boot of Ubuntu and Haren or Window's and Haren. All the programs that I can find to complete this either end up directing me on how to create a Ubuntu boot on a usb, or how to do it on Windows. But since it is my Windows computer that I'm trying to fix I need an alternative. Please Help?

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9 Answers

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 :)

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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.

5

Open the Software Center and install UNetbootin . From there you just run it and the rest explains itself.

2

Ok I found a solution here

This approach use grub2 and so it is very convenient if you want to do a multi boot usb

1. install grub 2 on the usb driver ( grub-install --force --no-floppy --boot-directory=[PATH_TO_USB] /dev/sd[X]
2. extract Hiren iso files on the usb ( you should have a folder /HBCD in the root of the usb )
3. copy grub.exe (can be found in hbcd\dos\dos.gz, inside the .img file)
4. copy menu.lst from the hbcd folder to the root of the usb drive
5. add the following menu entry to grub.cfg on the usb:

Here the menu entry:

menuentry "HBCD" { linux16 /grub.exe --config-file="find --set-root /HBCD/menu.lst; configfile /HBCD/menu.lst"
}

Once compleated you can reboot or test it with qemu:
qemu-system-x86_64 -hda /dev/sd[X]

get hiren's Iso into your HDD. insert your USB pendrive or whatever, download rufus and proceed with burning the hiren.ISO file into the USB. once you succeeded, you need to restart your pc and check that your BIOS is configured in such a way that your boot order has your harddrive as the last thing to boot from. Also make sure, that as you reboot your pc again, and you have your USB burned and plugged, you dont have anything else that your pc might boot from. Hope it helps (btw, i just did this 30 minutes ago...) Cheers!

1

There is a easy way of installing Hiren's Boot CD 15.2 on Linux (Ubuntu, Linuxmint, etc.).

Download the Universal USB Installer

and open in WINE. Choose Hirens Boot CD and everything is working like you would do it under Windows.

1

Another unusual approach that just saved me in this situation and hence should be mentioned here, is, that GRUB2 can boot ISO images directly!

The Ubuntu help describes it as such:

1. Install grml-rescueboot.
2. Place your ISO in /boot/grml/.
3. Run sudo update-grub

This will automatically create a boot entry for every ISO in that directory, using loopback and chain-loading.

So as long as you got a working Linux partition of any kind that has GRUB2 (wich is much easier and reliable to achieve), you can boot any ISO, even if it’s a problematic one.

Saving a normal Linux user from even needing any external medium. (Though loopbacks can boot isos from other partitions/media too, if you are willing to not use grml-rescueboot and do the GRUB2 config manually.)

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Grub 2 - Tutorial

Format your USB-Stick with FAT32 and:

1. Open a terminal and type sudo su // or su to get root access

2. Type fdisk -l (and note which device is your USB)

3. Type mkdir /mnt/USB && mount /dev/sdx1 /mnt/USB (replacing x with your actual usb device)

4. Type grub-install --force --removable --boot-directory=/mnt/USB/boot /dev/sdx (replacing x with your actual USB device)

5. Type cd /mnt/USB/boot/grub

6. Create a file /mnt/USB/boot/grub/grub.cfg with the following content:

   set default=0
   menuentry "HBCD" { linux16 /grub.exe --config-file="find --set-root /HBCD/menu.lst; configfile /HBCD/menu.lst"
   }

7. Copy the content of the hirens.iso to the root directory of your USB-Stick (like /mnt/USB/ )

Greetings Tom

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You can make a bootable USB on Ubuntu from any (bootable) .ISO image using dd command:

dd if=./someisofile.iso of=/dev/sdb

however, I'd like to warn you that dd is a very dangerous command and you should only proceed if you fully understand the meaning of its parameters, in particular, the of one.

If you google for something like "dd iso usb", you'll fins quite a few tutorials, for example this one from Fedora, this one from Linux Mint, or this one from ArchLinux

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