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I have extracted my iso to my pendrive instead of letting a boot utility software do it. Now I can't boot my pc with that pendrive. Moreover, it was formatted in windows prior to copying iso contents. Hence, I think this is what makes grub rescue not detect the file system.

I would like to know what a boot utility software (like pendrivelinux, or startup disk creator, etc) does. I hope this will guide me in creating a bootable drive, manually.

Edit:

I think I've found a partial answer. But what is a hybrid iso? How to create one?

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deostroll
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  • How did you "extract my iso to my pendrive"? If you do not want to use a program such as pendrive or other, use dd to copy the iso. You make the usb bootable by installing and configuring a boot loader, usually isolinux, but you can use grub. – Panther Nov 11 '14 at 06:01
  • On windows 8, this is by default possible. There is in-built software for that... – deostroll Nov 11 '14 at 06:28
  • You can open up Disks and click on the partition, then the gear, and then edit partition. There should be a bootable checkbox. If you prefer gparted, right click the partition, click flags, the select bootable. –  Nov 13 '14 at 21:18
  • That only adds a boot flag. Syslinux & Windows use that for BISO boot, but the boot code in the MBR has to be there to find the boot flag and jump to that partition to boot. So you also need a Windows type boot loader in the MBR. Grub does not use boot flag. If booting in UEFI then boot flag only highlights which partition has efi boot files and would be used to only know that the installer also has efi boot capability. – oldfred Nov 13 '14 at 23:58

2 Answers2

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Unetbootin has worked well for me. Very straight forward GUI.

Also, I would always format your pen/thumb/flash drive as FAT32, as any OS can see it.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

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Here are the files it creates:

enter image description here

Look inside the EFI/Boot directory and you will find Bootx64.efi which triggers the BIOS to boot from the USB:

enter image description here

Inside the syslinux.cfg file here is what you will find, this is the menu of options for starting up in failsafe mode, live mode, etc...:

default menu.c32
prompt 0
menu title UNetbootin
timeout 100

label unetbootindefault
menu label Default
kernel /ubnkern
append initrd=/ubninit menu_amd64 -- menu_486 -- menu_486


label ubnentry0
menu label menu_amd64
kernel /EFI/BOOT/vesamenu.c32
append initrd=/ubninit menu_amd64 -- menu_486 -- menu_486


label ubnentry1
menu label menu_486
kernel /EFI/BOOT/vesamenu.c32
append initrd=/live/initrd2.img boot=live config live-media=removable apparmor=1 security=apparmor nopersistent noprompt timezone=Etc/UTC block.events_dfl_poll_msecs=1000 splash noautologin module=Tails  quiet


label ubnentry2
menu label Live (failsafe)
kernel /live/vmlinuz2
append initrd=/live/initrd2.img boot=live config live-media=removable apparmor=1 security=apparmor nopersistent noprompt timezone=Etc/UTC block.events_dfl_poll_msecs=1000 splash noautologin module=Tails  noapic noapm nodma nomce nolapic nomodeset nosmp vga=normal


label ubnentry3
menu label Live
kernel /live/vmlinuz
append initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live config live-media=removable apparmor=1 security=apparmor nopersistent noprompt timezone=Etc/UTC block.events_dfl_poll_msecs=1000 splash noautologin module=Tails  quiet

Look inside the live folder and here is what you will see... notice the large file that is highlighted: That is the contents of the image or distro you are using

enter image description here

That is best way I know to explain it... manually doing this will take you hours.

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