video isostick : Demonstration & Configuration

[+Warwagon MVC]

Demonstration & Configuration

Sorry for some of the stuff that is out of focus. While the Cannon T2i DSLR records great video it does not auto-focus.

Update 3/25/2013

Today I had the first chance to use my new isostick during a work day. A computer came into my office which I suspected might a MBR rootkit that was preventing it from booting properly. I was going to use my BartPE USB stick to boot into BartPE and scan the MBR with tdsskiller. But then I remembered, BartPE is on my isostick! So I selected it from a list and booted from it.

Then after that I wanted to scan the computer with the Kaspersky rescue disc. I was like, that?s on my stick too!!! So I booted into that. I then used some of my other setup files located on the stick to complete the job.

This computer repair job which would have normally taken 3 USB swaps, was done off a single stick. For me at least the isostick lived up to my expectations.

[Detection]

A really good review WW, there is a long running problem of trying to install XP from flash (which can be done but its a PITA) and people trying to partition flash drives to have multiple installers on one drive,

Looks like this fixes both those issues, one question though, for computers that don't have the option to boot from USB Flash, will the fact that the drive appears as a physical drive solve that ? ie. Will it fool the BIOS into seeing it as an actual CD/DVDROM ?

EDIT - Oh and does the stick have special hardware, or could we create the same stick with any USB flash drive and those firmware files ? Thanks :)

[+Warwagon MVC]

Looks like this fixes both those issues, one question though, for computers that don't have the option to boot from USB Flash, will the fact that the drive appears as a physical drive solve that ? ie. Will it fool the BIOS into seeing it as an actual CD/DVDROM ?

Only if the bios allows the option of booting from a USB CDROM drive. Then yes it will, although because it's already so old of computer it may throttle the device down to usb 1.1. Then again maybe it won't.

[Detection]

Only if the bios allows the option of booting from a USB CDROM drive. Then yes it will, although because it's already so old of computer it may throttle the device down to usb 1.1. Then again maybe it won't.

The PC I was thinking about I have does allow USB CDROM and something else, I think zipdrive, but refuses to boot from USB Flash

I edited my post too about the files

[+Warwagon MVC]

The PC I was thinking about I have does allow USB CDROM and something else, I think zipdrive, but refuses to boot from USB Flash

I edited my post too about the files

There is a wiki page with a list of computers that it boots from it's a very incomplete list. But it also shows that some computers do have issues even booting from the device regardless if it supports usb cd rom or not. Though i've tested it on 4 machines without issue. 2 of which throttle the speed down to 1.1 :( But they were older computers. One was a gateway from 2002.

Nope, can't use a regular flash drive. The isostick has special built in hardware (and firmware) which allows it to do what it does.

[Detection]

There is a wiki page with a list of computers that it boots from it's a very incomplete list. But it also shows that some computers do have issues even booting from the device regardless if it supports usb cd rom or not. Though i've tested it on 4 machines without issue. 2 of which throttle the speed down to 1.1 :( But they were older computers. One was a gateway from 2002.

Thanks WW, I think I'll take a look at this, it could be the most useful review I've seem for quite some time, the techs dream flash drive

Nope, can't use a regular flash drive. The isostick has special built in hardware (and firmware) which allows it to do what it does.

Ok thanks :)

[+Warwagon MVC]

For those of you who are wondering what all those chipset, lan, graphics drivers were in that list. On my repair stick I have a drivers folder with iso images of driver packs for windows XP. I mount then as iso's so it will scan the entire thing for the drivers. other wise if they were just in a folder it would not go past one directory level unlike vista, 7 and 8 which scans the entire folder. So when it searched my stick it added those iso's to the list, even though they are in no way bootable.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I've been in communication with the creator of isostick. I'm not sure how he found my youtube video (it was literally just hours) so fast. Anyway he wanted to post them on his blog and he also wanted to tweet the video link. So that was super cool. So today I had a little bit of time, so I thought I would make another short video about isostick. This time it's a how to video no upgrading the firmware.