First off all you will need to download the following zip and extract it UsbRecoverySata.zip
- Run hpusbfw.exe, Select your device, pick FAT32 for the file system and the enter any volume label press start and it will begin to format your drive
- Open a CMD window start -> Search -> CMD, Drag bootsect.exe over onto the cmd window and it should print the path to bootsect.exe append it with the switch /nt52 and the letter of your flash drive e.g
bootsect.exe /nt52 H:
- Copy all the files from the folder "Copy the files inside me too your flash drive" to your flash drive
Using Tiny Hexer
- First of all open it by double clicking on TinyHexer.exe
- Go to file > disk > open drive and select your flash drive
- Once its opened go to edit > find/replace check the "find text" and "ignore case" boxes type NTLDR into the text box then press find. Press the replace button check "is text" box and enter CMLDR into the text box then press replace all
- Now go to file > save as and save it too your flash drive under the file name USBLDR
December 15th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
It is not working - I have not managed to save the USBLDR properly. Save As option is not working. I have selected all and saved it as a selection but it is not working as well.
March 6th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
GREAT A++++ it's work fine for me , i have a emachines laptops , w serial , the DVD RON is not working good , so i try this and is amazing, thank you
March 6th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Sweet , work perfect for me
March 7th, 2010 at 10:41 am
work perfectly. thanks
March 13th, 2010 at 5:30 am
The save as also did not work for me. Received access denied Error Code 5. Or something close to that. Please help.
March 14th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Hi Al S.
That access denied error if i remember right is used to a bug with the hex editor on vista and windows 7.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:57 am
work on my xp. thanks.
@ STGyro, u choosed to open correct drive letter (flash)?
March 22nd, 2010 at 4:04 am
Didn't work.
Boots to the following: Remove disks or other media. Press any key to restart
March 27th, 2010 at 1:49 am
Hmm...works great, until it comes to entering the admin password....my computer admin password doesn't work! Am I being dumb?
March 30th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Simply Perfect !
April 4th, 2010 at 8:49 am
To all of you unable to save, its just a corrupted download, delete it and redownload the .zip file. Any more than that I cannot offer
April 8th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Why is the hex reader asking me to individually replace every one of the NTLDR entries as opposed to actually finding and replacing all of them... at this rate it's going to take me 10+ hours, and I'm not spending that time babysitting a program searching 3 million sectors.
April 9th, 2010 at 3:16 am
Have created the Bootable USB and successfully opened the recovery console. My question is that I am only able to access files on the flash drive using recovery console. How do I tell the system that I want to edit files on the computer hard drive. The flash drive is C:> and any commands that I type in only bring up information relating to data on the flash drive. Any help would be much appreciated.....thanks
April 14th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Same question as Aaron above. I can't seem to (or don't know how to) access the computers hard drive.
Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions.
April 14th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Hi Aaron and Martin,
I do believe this may be an issue relating to SATA drivers. You'll need to load the SATA drivers during boot up off the recovery console. However the only way windows setup supports this is via a floppy drive. I'll see about slipstreaming SATA drivers to the attached recovery console files and will get back to you guys.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I am getting NTLDR Fatal Error 1 reading BOOT.INI.
Any thoughts?
April 15th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
didn't work on my xp. cant select save as, nothing happens.
April 17th, 2010 at 12:49 am
Hi Martin and Aaron, as promised I have made a version with all SATA controller drivers slipstreamed if you want it http://tuts4tech.net/files/UsbRecoverySata.zip
April 19th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
hi there...well, it seems that it work for most people...but i've a sata disk, and it shows the dreadred blue screen of death with the 0x0000007b error (it talks about the ahci/sata driver problem)...
so how can i bypass this problem, since i don't have a floppy drive.
thanks
April 19th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Hey Davicho,
Please make sure your using the zip from http://tuts4tech.net/files/UsbRecoverySata.zip the one in the tutorial doesn't include the sata drivers
April 19th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
hi, I used the original but had the same issues as martin and aaron. I have also tried the sata zip download but after it shows the recovery console starting up I just end up with a black screen. Thanks
April 19th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Hi Matt, that should be happening have you given it much time on the black screen to check that it still isn't loading? only thing I could advice is refollowing the steps again and seeing it works.
April 19th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Hi Duffy, left it for quite a while but no joy. Have download the zip file again and tried a few times but it doesn't load up. Thanks.
April 21st, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Hi duffy, what's "bootsect" thing for in you last zip-file?
April 21st, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Hi Wim, bootsect isn't covered under this tutorial however it might come in useful for some people. I had to use it myself, I was on windows 7 and using an 8gb flash drive so FAT wouldn't work and I had to use FAT32 however when formated I was getting a weird bootsector on the drive. Using bootsect.exe /nt52 it replaced it with the standard bootsector
April 30th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Tutorial updated with a video tutorial.
April 30th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Makes sense, thx for the quick reply, and keep up the good work. I think you're realy helping a lot of people here (including me; it worked like a charm!)
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:54 pm
sweeet! thanks mate..
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Glad it helped seba!
May 9th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I'm getting "NTLDR is missing" press any key...???
May 9th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Hi Ville, that error usually suggests that something became corrupt when making the drive. Repeat the tutorial/process and it should fix it.
May 9th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
tested on my other laptop, work's fine but on the other I'm still getting "NTLDR is missing...." Any thought's??
May 11th, 2010 at 5:44 am
I am also having the NTLDR is missing and have repeated the process twice with the same results, i also noticed that i do see the proper files on the flash drive. Thank you,
May 11th, 2010 at 8:16 am
Shouldn't be the case, Just out of interest what size if the flash drive?
May 13th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
A 4 gig,
May 13th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hi NpC, Unsure as to why that is happening you unless the drive has some weird kind of partitions done by the manufacture... try the following
1) Open a CMD window
2) Type diskpart
3) do list disk and note down the disk number that relates to your drive
4) do select disk
5) run the following commands:
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
exit
Once thats done refollow the tutorial from step 2 to see if it makes any differences.
May 15th, 2010 at 8:30 am
thx, this really help
May 19th, 2010 at 2:50 am
Brilliant Duffy! I followed your video and it worked on my first attempt.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:57 am
Wow! Thank you very much.
I tried about 5 different ways of doing this but none of them worked til I came across this page and saw your video.
May 31st, 2010 at 12:05 am
WORKED LIKE A CHARM...at first the bootsect.exe thing wasn't working for my command prompt but i realized i was typing in the wrong thing OVER N OVER N OVER AGAIN lol! But I got my desktop back to life! Thank you!
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:36 pm
it worked very well thanks dude, you save my ass xD
i was having troubles with an acer aspire one
cheers from mexico
June 16th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Hey Duff, when I Drag the BOOTSECT to the comand prompt and enter /nt52 F: it says "C:\Documents is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file"... i've checked the path countless times I can't get passed this point. any ideas? thanks
June 16th, 2010 at 5:23 am
Got it.. Thanks.. Wrong path, Duh. Thanks alot.
June 25th, 2010 at 7:51 am
Many Thanks, Duffy!
I followed your instructions on Windows Vista Home Premium. My USB flash drive was a 2GB Verbatim Stop'n'Go.
On my first attempt, I wasn't able to perform 'Save as...' -- clicking on this option in the 'File' menu of 'TinyHexer' had simply no effect. Possibly, the reason was that after performing 'Find+Replace All' operation -- as you described it, I executed 'Find' again, this time to find all instances of the string CMLDR, while the whole purpose of the step is to save only the *first* sector where 'TinyHexer' finds the 'NTLDR' string.
At this point I aborted the installation and repeated again all the steps in your instruction, *except* that I changed the order of the steps:
1. , 2., 4., and then 3.
In other words, I first opened TinyHexer and performed the 'Find+ReplaceAll+Save as...' operation and, *after* closing TinyHexer, I copied to the flash drive the contents of the "Copy the files inside me to your flash drive" folder.
The step involving 'bootsect.exe /nt52' writes to Sector 0 of the flash drive, and the step involving 'TinyHexer' saves precisely sector 0 to the file named USBLDR, and simultaneously replaces 2 instances of the string 'NTLDR' by the string 'CMLDR'.
If you suggest to your readers performing these four steps in the order described above, perhaps there will be fewer problems reported.
June 26th, 2010 at 11:28 am
Your tutorial performed flawlessly on a Sony Vaio VGN-NR310E (your inclusion of SATA drivers were a much needed blessing).
Thank you so much for your dedication to making these instructions simple enough for anyone to be able to follow! :)
June 14th, 2011 at 2:25 am
Hi Duffy, i followed all the instruccion and appears an error message that says WINDOWS ROOT)SYSTEM32HA.DLL. is missing or dont work???
What i need to doy???
Thnks
June 24th, 2011 at 11:04 pm
same as above? not sure but i recon i have done the step correctly? any help would be great thanks Rv
June 24th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
well got it to boot the recovery console, well sort of it is now saying " The file adpu320.sys is corrupted. press any key to continue" not sure now ???????????????
But FER i had the same issue and it was because i never saved the USBLDR file to the usb drive? make sure it there?
June 25th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Hi Duffy
Each time that I input the /nt52 part I get a message
"target volumes will be updated with NTLDR compatible bootcode.
Could not map drive partitions to the associated volume device objects. Access is denied."
I have been able to go through all the steps after this including replacing NTLDR with CMLDR (it only finds 1 replacement)but I am unable to save as. My computer system is operating Window 7 but this is for my Acer netbook which is XP.
I have re-done the steps very carefully about 5 times now (in case I had mis-typed anything) but it is the same result.
ANY help would be greatly appreciated as my netbook is just hanging.
Thank you.
July 6th, 2011 at 5:12 am
Duffy,
I am getting the exact same message as Goldengirl:
help!!
September 7th, 2011 at 6:18 am
You need to run Command Prompt as an Administrator.
Right-click on CMD and select "Run as Administrator" from the menu and it will work.
June 25th, 2011 at 11:44 pm
OMG finally I found something on the internet that works! I want to kiss your feet!!!
July 17th, 2011 at 5:02 am
when i press "usb drive"It says press f1 to continue, f2 to enter system setup, I press f1 and it freezes so? :/
July 26th, 2011 at 5:16 am
I cant find the NTLDR on the TinyHexer.