Forum: USBoot

> Firstly, why does USBoot have to install so many USB and IEEE1394 drivers for devices that I have no intention of using? I just want to get my working XP running from a USB stick.

It depends if you want to "run you working XP from a USB stick" on the same system it is already running on from disk or if the system should also be prepared to run on different hardware ...

... if you are sure that you will ever only boot in exact your actual configuration you should be able to may skip step VII (and most certainly also step VIII) of phase II.

> Anyway, during Stage II my USB mouse and keyboard stopped working, leaving open a dialog box asking me where some system file was and no way of controlling it. Luckily Remote Desktop was working, so I was able to control the PC from my other one to finish the install.

So for some reason you have some incomplete set of driver installation files in your system. Possible explanations could be the usage of a downsized/'optimized' installation or of third party drivers that do not fully comply with Microsoft's driver guidelines.

> Then I got an error about the EFW driver, which seemed to be due to a missing .inf file.

Did you select to install the EWF filter? If so, did you provide the necessary files in the folder 'ewf'?

>Once I found that .inf file, I right-clicked on it to install it rather than running Stage II all over again. Maybe that was wrong.
> When I tried to reboot, it failed with a BSOD, so I had to restore my Ghost image.

Your try to do a manual install circumventing the use of the USBoot installer may be the cause of this BSOD.

> Incidentally, I have to use older usb*.sys files on my PC, as otherwise my Hauppauge Nova T-500 tv card causes the computer to crash, so when USBoot asks for the usb files, I have to point it to the ones on my hard drive, rather than the ones on the XP CD.

It is almost impossible to predict let alone test USBoot's behaviour on such tweaked non-standard installations.

Gerd