this mite be a bit overkill but the fedora-core live-usb creator installs grub to usb devices.

I will certainly try it !
And I will let you know.

Thank you,

Babypeng

And yes, I did try to install Grub4Dos with the installer,
and not with "dd".

I will try the "dd" .

Babypeng

Hi CJS,

I tried installing grub4dos with the dd command.
I followed your instructions.
It didn't work.
The dd command ran fine but When I boot from
the mp3 player I get a blank screen.

So I tried it again on a regular pendrive
and it worked just fine.

Do tou have any other ideas ?


And another thing,
why did you write "bs=440" in the dd command ?
Isn't it supposed to be "512", which is the size of the mbr ?


Thank you,

babypeng

Sorry to hear that didn't work. As I noted back in post #12, your MP3 player uses a different geometry (32 heads/cylinder, 52 sectors/track) than the linux standard of 255 heads/cylinder, 63 sectors/track, and even though that in itself should not be a problem, I think about the only thing I can suggest would be to use gparted to reformat the MP3 player drive and set up a FAT16 partition with standard linux rules; that might help. I would only do that if you don't plan on using that MP3 player for listening to music again, because it might be that setting up a different partition geometry will make it so the MP3 Player won't see the partition correctly. But even if that were to happen, I think you will always be able to use the MP3 player for storing files at least, like a standard thumb drive.
I'm glad you decided to use "440" and not "512", because if you had used 512, you would have erased the partition table on that drive. It turns out that the MBR contains not only the boot code to boot the drive, but bytes 447-512 in the MBR contain the drive's partition table. Also, there is a 4 byte "disk signature" that comes before the partition table, so to preserve the disk signature and the partition table, the MBR boot code generally goes from bytes 1-440. Theoretically the boot code in the MBR could also use the bytes used by the disk signature, but that can wreak havoc with an OS like Windows Vista since it uses that disk signature. Fortunately, most boot loaders in the MBR never use more than the first 440 bytes so it's not an issue.

Helo CJS,

I do intend to use my mp3 player as a player ,
so I will not format it to fit linux.
I guess it’s time to get a “real“ thumbdrive .

I learned alot along the way.
Thank you very much for your help.

Babypeng

You're welcome, it was an interesting experiment to see if you could get your mp3 to boot with Grub. But I definitely think you will have better luck with a thumb drive.

for what it is worth i got a creative zen vision w to boot fedora-core-9 live-usb and knoppix-live-usb.