scary USB stick experience! be warned.

from WinCustomize Forums
i brought some files home from work on my USB memory stick. just one of those little devices that you plug into a USB port, and it acts as an extra drive letter

i had also purchased Norton Anti-Virus, i am fed up with the free AV from work, you cannot make it auto update, and have to download and install all of the updates manually

so, after grabbing a couple of files from the USB stick, i un-installed the old AV and rebooted, prior to installing Norton.

however, instead of windows XP loading i got a black screen, and some text telling me that i was trying to boot off of a non system disk, and i should remove it and try again... something told me this wasn't good!

so i did what any expert would do, i rebooted to see of the problem would go away

when it didn't i removed the DVD from the drive, and tried again. my machine still wouldn't boot!

so, i tried booting of a CD, but that didn't work. finally i dug out a dos 6.22 boot disk, and booted off of that. when i got to the command prompt i had a look at C:\ to see what had happened to my hard drive...

it took a few moments to work out what i was seeing, since this didn't look like the normal C:\ i am used to...

it was my USB stick! my machine had detected it, given it a drive letter, and then tried to boot off of it, all at the BIOS level!

the moral of this story is, don't reboot with a USB stick plugged in. i had never done that before, and don't intend to repeat the experience.



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Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
This a quite normal feature for modern motherboard BIOSes. I can see how it may be quite handy in some circumstances though I've no idea how to make a USB memory stick bootable ('sys' command?).

If you enter the BIOS setup you should be able to turn that feature off or otherwise reconfigure it to boot from the HDD first before trying the USB stick.




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Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yes, quite normal behavior as Chris described, but I know many people that have soiled their pants over this issue.

On a side note, if you're using SAVCE from work and you can't set it to do auto (daily) updates, your IT person gave you the wrong client install. What you want is an "unmanaged" client at home.
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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yes, Ive had the same expierence...

But, it took me just a few seconds to realize what was wrong...
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My grandma leaves floppies in the drive all the time, so I used to get about a phone call a week. "Whats this error mean when I start up the computer?"
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
what everybody else said. change your boot order.

on new computers, dells as i've noticed most often, they are also set by default not to attempt to boot from a CD. if you're trying to repair a windows installation, it could become very irritating to not be able to get on to that cd on boot. next time you're in there, just remember to set it to look at your cd rom, floppy, then harddrive, usb last if at all.

that option is there because external harddrives are getting bigger and faster, and as a back up you could have an xp installaton on the external drive, to boot to if your main one fails.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
now what you SHOULD be worried about is that usb stick breaking down on you, as i've heard they are not all that shock resistance.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hmmm.. I discovered that in reverse. Went to shut down a pc that had a USB stick plugged in and I got a message telling me to remove the disk from the drive. I just took the logical approach and tried the usb stick first.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
a nice thing about XP is that it realizes when you are using removable media, and doesn't enable write-caching on such media.. so you dont have to worry about 'ejecting' the media before you pull it out, which would result in data loss.

don't know what the heck im talking about? don't worry about it. just know there is yet another cozy peice of many new cozy peices that make the OS oh so convinient
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
DC seen more than one person back in 1989 pull a floppy out before the amber light had turned off and found out "OoPs!"...

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
89? you mean when the OS ran off of a bootable floppy, residing entirely in memory? mua haha.. those were the days. applemotion and lego-logo all the way!
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Orion - On a side note, if you're using SAVCE from work and you can't set it to do auto (daily) updates, your IT person gave you the wrong client install. What you want is an "unmanaged" client at home.


it was Sophos, and even the IT people cannot get it to auto update. you need to provide it with a suitable, semi-local, server before it will auto update

as for the motherboard and the boot order, now i know this is possible i will know what to watch out for in future.

with regard to shock resistant, i am careful with the stick. still, this is already my second USB stick, since the first one cracked and fell appart after a few months *rolles eyes*



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Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thats actualy a good idea, using a usb stick too boot instead of easy to break floppies.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
MemSticks are one of the most serious security risks going these days.

Watches, Phones, Pens, PDAs, StickDrives, MicroDrives, and on and on. Want to steal and sell that prototypes design files, pop in a USB device. Want to infect the whole damn network, pop in a USB device. Which is why Auto Designers and many others with strick conrtol over data have signs demanding all such devices be turned into security for later pick up when leaving the building.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I call it the Ying Yang effect.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hehehe

Depends, at the point that it does become a secuirty issue it is called the "finger pointing effect, Ralph didn't disable the USB ports, did too, did not, yes I did, no, yes, no, .. "
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
If it wasnt for the USB stick, in the movie the Recruit the girl would of had to stuff the hardrive in her pants. so im thankfull for usb stick contribution to movies lol.
hmmm hardrive down pants would of been a good scene lol