I’m sure everyone visiting this site has heard of U3 Smart drives. Have you ever wanted to be able to add your own applications to the launchpad? Well, now you can; for some applications anyways.
If you have an application you would like to be runnable from your U3 Smart drive you can achieve this in just a few steps. This may not work for larger applications or for applications that rely on registry entries. The application I’ll be walking through in this article will be DOSBox; a great MSDOS emulator capable of playing your favorite old school games. You can obtain the copy of DOSBox HERE.
After download the application install or extract it to a folder in your U3’s Applications folder. Name this folder something simple, but yet something easy to recognize. The installer automatically choses DOSBoxPortable in this case.
The application is now technically runnable from the U3 drive. However, it will not be on the launchpad. To put an icon on the launchpad begin by opening the System folder on the U3 drive. Note that you must be able to see hidden files in order to open this folder. Inside of the System folder is another folder named Apps. Go in this folder and make a new folder that will be for your application you just installed on the drive. Make it simple yet recognizable again. This time I used “dosbox”.
Now that you have a folder named “dosbox” go inside of it and create another folder named “Manifest”. This folder MUST be named “Manifest” for the U3 launchpad application to recognize it.
Inside of this Manifest folder place a new file called “Manifest.u3i” and the icon of your application in .ico format.
Open Manifest.u3i in notepad and modify the following lines. The first line you need to change is in the <application> tag. Change the uuid to the exact name of the folder you placed the Manifest folder in. In this case it was “dosbox”. You may also put a version number for that application if you wish. The version of DOSBox installed was 0.72 in this case. The next tag is the <icon> tag. Change the icon name to the name of the icon you placed in the Manifest folder. In this example it is dosbox.ico. For the <name> tag put the name how you would like it shown on the launchpad menu. The <vendor> tag shows who has distributed the finished package. The <description> tag lets you enter a description which will show as a pop-up tip on the launchpad menu.
The next two tags, and the most important, are <appStart> and <appStop>. In the <appStart> tag change the workingdir to the path of the installed application. In this case it is “%U3_Device_Path%\applications\DOSBoxPortable”. Change the command that is executed, which is the cmd line, to the executable you wish to be ran. In this case it is “%U3_DEVICE_PATH%\applications\DOSBoxPortable\DOSBoxPortable.exe”. The workingdir and cmd for the <appStop> tag will be the same.
Now that you have the two files necessary in the Manifest folder zip up the folder.
You can delete the folder now that you have a zip file of the folder. Now rename the zip file extension to u3p extension and also change the name of the file to the same name as the folder it resides. In this case the file gets renamed to “dosbox.u3p”.
We’re almost finished with adding a menu item to the launchpad. The next and final step is to open the LPDB.xml file in notepad and adding a line. Add the following line between the to <LPDB> tags: “<APPLICATION guid=”dosbox” launchOnStart=”N” lastUsed=”5/4/2006 10:03:12 AM”>\dosbox.u3p</APPLICATION>” The guid is the name of the folder/u3p file you wish to add to the menu. To make it launch when you insert your U3 Smart drive change launchOnStart to a “Y”. I do not want the application starting every time I insert the thumb drive so I left it a “N”. Now put the name of the package in between the application tags. In this case it is “\dosbox.u3p”.
Now save the file, eject the drive, and reinsert the drive. You should see a menu item for your new application. It will probably be under the “More Programs” section until you change your program settings and move it up on the list.
Now you have successfully added an application to your drive. It will keep it’s data on the drive and be with you where ever you go. But since this is a DOS emulator we need one more step. Make a folder on your drive named DOS or something similar. This is where you will place all the DOS programs you wish to emulate. Treat this folder as a regular folder and add folders in it to keep various programs in as you would DOS. Once you load DOSBox you must mount the folder as a drive. Type the following: “mount c: m:\DOS”. Make sure you use the correct drive letter for your thumb drive and the folder you used to store your DOS items in. In this case it was “m” and “\DOS”, respectively. Now that the drive is mounted as C you can simply type “C:” to go it and start away with all those old DOS commands you never forgot such as “dir/w”.
Now relive those days of youth where ever you may roam!
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Custom U3 Applications | TangyPop.com on 04.24.08this didnt work for me, it told me to format the drive.
David on 05.05.08What step were you on when it asked you to format?
Chris Spurlock on 05.05.08Neither for me exactly the same as David something went obviosly wrong 1 thing it can be i guess is the directory applications dosent excist
micke on 06.01.08If the folder isn’t visible, under XP, go to “Tools” on the tool bar and select “Folder Options…” In the dialog box that pops up open the “View” tab and make sure the radio select button for “Show hidden files and folders” is selected. The hidden “System” folder contains a folder named “Apps.” Hopefully this will help.
Chris Spurlock on 06.02.08I always have it on watch hidden files incase someone sends unwanted files and i also tried the folder apps i guess im doing something wrong but when i start it up after it wont load
Micke on 06.04.08Hoi!
I had the same message, after installing, unplugging and re-plugging my USB, but I found out this: I just copied the line
\dosbox.u3p
from this site into my file, but the quotation marks were wrong. I just edited my LPDB.xml with the right quotation marks and all was fine!
Thanks for this tutorial! And Power to the DOS!
Bastian
Bastian on 09.11.08My last comment got edited by the system, I mean the line
[APPLICATION guid=”dosbox” launchOnStart=”N” lastUsed=”5/4/2006 10:03:12 AM”]dosbox.u3p[☺/APPLICATION]
Bastian
Bastian on 09.11.08I wasn’t aware it was that picky about the quotation marks. I’ve encountered this in other applications such as saving a file in notepad as ANSI instead of Unicode. Thanks for the heads up on the problem.
Chris Spurlock on 09.12.08ok so i read all of this right, and i get “dosbox.u3p failed to load. Do you want to uninstall it? Yes or No?” i said No. what do i do in this case? please help!
Mark on 09.21.08D:
oh.. & would i use this same method for other programs?
The first thing that comes to mind is check the folder name you have dosbox.u3p stored in and check that the folder name is the same as the guid in the LPDB.xml file. If that doesn’t help check the Manifest.u3i file inside of the dosbox.u3p archive for a few things. First make sure the uuid in the Manifest.u3i matches the guid in the LPDB.xml file. Next, make sure the workingdir points to the folder containing the exe file for dosbox and cmd points to the exe file itself. Also before you zip up the contents and rename them dosbox.u3p make sure that the u3i and ico file are not on the top level of the archive and that they are in a folder named Manifest in the archive. Other than that all I could recommend would be to check all the syntax for missing closing tags, opening tags, apostrophes, etc. I hope one of those suggestions helps you find the problem.
This process would work for any application, with a few guidelines. The application should not rely on a registry to store information. Those applications probably won’t work correctly on the u3 drive. As well the program should not store information in a predetermined and unchangeable spot on the computer, such as the application data under your user documents. If that is the case the application may or may not work.
Chris Spurlock on 09.21.08thanks i will re-try, and see what happens.
mark on 09.23.08this was a grate tutorial, I am trying it with a different program called Dev-PHP, http://devphp.sourceforge.net/ it has a portable version of the program that I have had working on my U3 for some time.
When I tried to integrate to application list I get the same response that mark did.
It complains that it is broken and if I want to remove it, but the program works when I use the .exe
Since I didn’t have any fresh source files, I unpacked and copied the u3i and the LPDB entry and edited them according to the specs here.
was that a bad idea? I have meticulously gone through all your recommendations, checked for quotes and naming. I have run out of things to look for.
any ideas? I can post my files if someone knows what to look for
thanks
Jonathon
Jonathon on 10.29.08Post what you put into the LPDB, the manifest.u3i, as well as how you have the structure of the u3p file. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake in the example or haven’t explained myself thorough enough.
Chris Spurlock on 10.29.08http://db.canadiandiscovery.com/U3program.zip
This is the address of the file I have posted, I can only have it up for about a week or 2 till someone will notice it on there
I have edited the LPDB file to put a couple extra lines empty lines in the file to point at what I have added.
Any help is greatly appreciated
Jonathon on 10.30.08I just got my U3 drive, but where did you get the manifest.u3i file from?
? on 11.19.08Sorry my replies are a bit delayed. I’ve been feeling under the weather lately.
@Jonathon - This gave me a decent scare when I tried it out on my own U3 drive. It actually said the drive wasn’t formatted as opposed to the error you received. I removed the folders and the reference in the LPDB to get the U3 system working again then dove in. I eventually got the program loading in the menu, but am not sure which was the winning move. For starters I renamed everything with “DEVphp”, “DevPHP”, etc to lowercase to simplify the naming. I changed the folder in Applications and the folder in System/Apps both to “devphp”. Then, in the devphp.u3p I noticed “Manifest” was misspelled “Mainfest”. In the Manifest.u3i I also noticed the icon name didn’t match the icons name so I modified it to “appicon1.ico”. Also, I changed the appStart and appStop to match by making the “devphp” references lowercase. I also changed “%U3_HOST_EXEC_PATH%” to “%U3_DEVICE_PATH%” in all four instances. In the LPDB file I changed the “devphp” references to lowercase as well.
@? - The manifest.u3i could be a newly created document using notepad if you wish to type more. I am lazy and opened another application’s folder and simply copied the contents to the folder I was working in. Then I changed what needed to be changed.
Chris Spurlock on 12.03.08Hey Chris,
First off all, thank you for this amazing tutorial you made for us.
It’s really simple and you think nothing could go wrong, well, at least I thought so.
The Launchpad recognizes my dosbox.u3p so it appears in the Launchpad window. But when I try to launch it, I get the following message: “An error has occurred while trying tot start the selected program”.
I have done all I could to understand why it didn’t work, but I tried and didn’t succeeded. Maybe you you could help me.
Thanks in advance.
Joost
joost on 12.09.08