Question: I want to boot the TrueCrypt rescue disk from a USB flash drive. I have Windows 7 64bit so I cannot use Grub4Dos to do this (it only works on 32bit system), and 99% of all documentations on how to create this rescue USB stick involve Grub4Dos.
So I tried using a program called FlashBoot but couldn’t figure it out. I did some operation on the USB stick using FlashBoot, to make the USB bootable or something to a DVD ISO. However as I got lost and wasn’t sure what I was doing, i abandoned FlashBoot and just formatted the USB stick.
Then I found the following instructions to USE syslinux for this purpose:
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mephisto wrote: ?Ok, this is how it worked for me:
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I followed those instructions to the letter. Before doing so I again formatted the USB stick, this time as FAT32 with 16k. Then I tried to restart the system. This is what I saw (large version):
Now why on Earth would it say FlashBoot loader there? It seems very bizarre. I formatted the USB stick, a full format that took like 5 minutes. Not only that but after seeing this I formatted it like 5 times and redid the above instructions and still see this screen.
Does anyone have an idea where I am going wrong here?
I’m asking this question here and not on the Truecrypt forums because they really frown upon people asking this question there, as it has been answered many times. They simply will not help. However my case has not been answered by the numerous tutorials on the internet.
Answer: After spending 4 hours trying to fix the same issue (I accidentally overwrote TrueCrypt’s boot loader with grub…) I finally found a way to make this work with grub4dos on my 64bit Asus Eeee PC:
It’s roughly the steps described at http://stdout-dev-null.blogspot.fr/2010/02/truecrypt-rescue-disk-on-usb.html except that the grub4dos install procedure that is described there is not working so the way to make this actually work is to use an ISO that already installs grub4dos properly for you such as the ultimate boot cd: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
1: Follow the steps to put it on an USB stick: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/customize.html
2: Add your TrueCrypt recovery .iso image at the root of your drive (name it tc.iso)
3: Edit G:ubcdmenusgrub4dosmain.lst (where G: is you usb stick) and add the following at the bottom:
title TRUECRYPT RESCUE DISK find –set-root /tc.iso map –mem /tc.iso (hd32) map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) map –hook root (hd32) chainloader (hd32)
You may need to adapt the map part of the config above because the truecrypt recovery will only write to ‘drive 0’ (I’m not sure if this is particular to my setup)
(by default drive 0 is the device you are booting from – your USB stick)
Then boot from the USB stick, select grub4dos menu (at the bottom) then select TRUECRYPT RESCUE DISKThe TC boot loader will start asking you for your password, ignore that and use the recovery options.
Note that in my case I had to recover the boot loader AND the volume keys else my password was not recognised. Then Windows 7 x64 happily booted without issue.