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Booting Windows CE with USB

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I have seen a number of posts asking about "How to Boot Windows CE with USB?"; even I searched for it when I wanted to boot my Pentium IV machine with Windows CE 6.0! After so much of efforts of both of us (my manager and me), my manager came up with a way to boot WinCE with USB and whoa! it worked!! And since then, working on WinCE driver went on smoothly.
Yesterday I saw a post on MSDN asking the same question and felt it is worth to post the Solution on my blog.
NB: This post takes Windows CE 6.0 as a reference. The location of boot files might not be same in Win CE 5.0 and Win EC7, but it's easier to find them!!

However, I have tested this method on Windows CE 5.0, 6.0 and Windows EC7 and it works well.
So, here it goes...

  • Softwares needed: VFD(Virtual Floppy Drive), winb98se.IMA (boot98se.zip) and HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. A quick Google search makes this all available.

  • Get a 1/2/4 GB USB Mass Storage device.

  • Ensure that "Hidden Files" and "Protected Operating System Files" are set to "Visible" in the "Folder Options".

This is a two step process:

Step 1: Creating a Virtual Floppy Drive

  • Download the **vfd21-080206.zip **from http://sourceforge.net/projects/vfd/. Extract it.

  • Download boot98se.zip from http://search.4shared-china.com/q/lastmonth/040/BOOT98SE and extract it to get winb98se.IMA.

  • Run “vfdwin.exe” as administrator to install and start the Virtual Floppy driver.

  • Click on Open/Create. When prompted for Image File, Browse to “boot98se\winb98se.IMA” and click “Open”.

  • Again click “Open” in “Open Virtual Floppy Image” window.

  • Note the “Drive Letter” in “VFD Control Panel” window. Say for Example B:

  • If “Drive Letter” is not set, set it to A:,B: etc. from the options in the drop-down menu.

  • Open My Computer and right click on the Virtual Floppy Drive (for ex- B:) and select "Format."

  • In the Format window that opens, Check the boxes "Quick Format" and "Create an MS-DOS startup disk." Click OK on the warning that follows.

Step 2: Making the USB Flash Drive as bootable

  • Install “SP27608-2.1.8.exe” program (HP USB Disk Storage format Tool). Select your USB stick from the “Volume Label” option.

  • Check the box saying “Create a DOS startup disk”. When prompted for DOS system files, Browse to the Virtual Floppy Drive (B: for Ex.). Click “Start”.

  • After Format is done, copy all files from “(C:\WINCE600\PLATFORM\CEPC\SRC\BOOTLOADER\DOS\BOOTDISK” to USB stick.

  • Copy HIMEM.sys file, into the USB disk from the virtual floppy drive.

  • Copy the NK.bin file to the USB disk.

Edit the autoexec.bat file for proper resolution. You can run Vesatest program to get supported display modes. For a Desktop PC screen, it is typically 1024x768x32. The argument on the autoexec.bat is like: "loadcepc /l:1024x768x32 nk.bin" for a locally copied NK.bin image.

Boot the CEPC. It should come up!!