This is the Beginning

This is the beginning.

This post is the very first step in creating your ultimate diagnostics utility. This post will explain the initial creation of the flash drive; how to make it bootable and how to add the initial tools.

What you will need:
1. Hirens Boot CD iso file. (Download here.)
2. USB Format Tool. (Available in the iso)
3. Grub4DOS Installer (Also available in the iso)
4. Of course a flash drive, now the size can be anywhere from 1GB up, and the size will all depend on the amount of modification you are looking to do. If you are just wanting the original HirensBootCD in flash drive format than 1GB is plenty. But to do the modifications I am going to do I would suggest at least and 8GB (This is what I use as i am too tight to buy a 32GB.)

Configuring The Flash Drive MBR

1. Now the first thing you will need to do is extract the iso file. To do this I recommend using 7zip as it will open iso files (and many others.) and is free. Now to keep everything simple I recommend extracting everything in a single directory, say on your desktop. So, create a folder named "BootUSB" and another folder inside that folder called "Hirens". Extract all of the files from the iso into "Hirens".

2. Now that you have the iso extracted. Under the "Hirens" folder there should be a file named "HBCDMenu.cmd", open the file and you should have a box that looks like this:






Now click Programs -> Partition/Boot/MBR -> USB Format Tool






You will get a screen like this now you must select your device (Make sure it is your flash drive and that there is no important data on it, this will delete everything!) We will use NTFS formatting as we may need big files for later modifications.

3. Go back to the "HBCDMenu.cmd." Once again click on Programs -> Partition/Boot/MBR, but this time click Grub4Dos Installer (That is Programs -> Partition/Boot/MBR -> Grub4Dos Installer).
You will get this Screen.


Now comes a slightly tricky part so i have labeled to help.
                   1. Select disk, and the appropriate disk (Once again, make sure you select the right drive as this will change the Master Boot Record and can prevent an OS from booting.)
                   2. Click Refresh
                   3. Select "Whole Disk (MBR)"
                   4. Click "Install"

Now this program changes the Master Boot Record and make the flash drive boot as if it is running GRUB (a boot manager).

Now that we have the flash drive configured. We will move on to adding the files.

Adding The Files

In this stage we will add all the files necessary to create the boot menu.

1. Navigate to your extracted Hirens iso, then to the subfolder HBCD. Desktop/Hirens/HBCD
2. In this folder there will be a number of files, we need 2 Files. They are called grldr (simply the GRUB loader file) and menu.lst (This has all the items that will be in the menu. This has already been configured with all of the tools on HBCD). Simply copy these two files to the root directory of your flash drive.
3. Now navigate to the extracted Hirens iso again. That is Desktop/Hirens. Copy the whole "HBCD" folder to the root directory of your flash drive. This folder contains all of the tools that are on the BootCD.

The root of your drive should look like this:

Booting To The Flash Drive

• The flash drive is now ready and able to be booted to. Now the drive should be able to boot on most new systems. I have had issues with it not booting on old systems (P4, AMD64).
• To boot to it simply access the boot menu of the BIOS of a motherboard, most Intel motherboards require you to strike F10 on boot. ASUS boards are usually F8. Some are F12 or F9 even F2.
• The drive generally shows up as a HDD or USB HDD, sometime USB Memory.
• On systems that refuse to boot to the drive, you can use an CD version of Hirens then use the menu to boot to the drive (That may be in a later tutorial.)
• BIOS updates sometimes fix issues with booting to the drive.