Syslinux - Jan 2008 - Booting

Hi All

My first experience with syslinux I have created a debian live bootable 
environment.
Which creates a fat16 format USB-HDD and then uses syslinux to boot up 
with (Provided the hardware allows you to boot from USB).

When I plug the USB Stick into say a windows machine it mounts the USB 
drive and you can see the linux kernel files syslinux and other files


Question: Is there a way to click a file or exe, which will cause the 
machine to reboot pointing to the USB stick (which is already inserted)
without:
   (a) effecting or modifing the MBR
   (b) or the HDD?

Some hardware
  (1) Will boot from USB no problems
  (2) Some you have to change the BIOS order
  (3) Others don't know what USB booting is  (TO overcome this)

In sequence in mind:
Running Windows,
Insert the USB stick,
Change to F: (or whatever USB stick is)
Click a reboot file
reboot the machine into the USB stick
Work in the USB environment
shutdown, removed the USB stick
boot back into Windows (totally uneffected)


How is this possible? (I'm willing to write my own reboot.exe if it does 
not exist already)

Thank You

Barry

Barry Fawthrop wrote:
> 
> Question: Is there a way to click a file or exe, which will cause the 
> machine to reboot pointing to the USB stick (which is already inserted)
> without:
>    (a) effecting or modifing the MBR
>    (b) or the HDD?
> 
> Some hardware
>   (1) Will boot from USB no problems
>   (2) Some you have to change the BIOS order
>   (3) Others don't know what USB booting is  (TO overcome this)
> 
> In sequence in mind:
> Running Windows,
> Insert the USB stick,
> Change to F: (or whatever USB stick is)
> Click a reboot file
> reboot the machine into the USB stick
> Work in the USB environment
> shutdown, removed the USB stick
> boot back into Windows (totally uneffected)
> 
> How is this possible? (I'm willing to write my own reboot.exe if it
does
> not exist already)
> 
It's not possible except with older versions (95/98/ME) of Windows 
(where you could use Loadlin) or by using a virtual machine.

	-hpa