Booting Your OS from a USB Drive

⚠ Note
This method does not work as of 31/08/2022. The cause of the issue is being investigated.

Configuration

In order to boot your Cosmos OS on real hardware with a USB drive, follow the steps below:

1. In Visual Studio, with your project open, on the top bar of the IDE go to "Build -> Configuration Manager..."
2. Assuming your project is called "CosmosKernel1", in the Solution Explorer, right-click "CosmosKernel1Boot" and select "Properties" and change the Profile from "VMWare" to "ISO Image".
3. Click "Start" like you normally would to test your OS, and let it build, compile, etc.
4. When it's done, look in whatever folder your project, and locate the .iso file it generated. Assuming your project was called "CosmosKernel1", it would be located within your project folder as follows: "...\CosmosKernel1\bin\CosmosKernel1Boot.iso"
5. Download Rufus Portable from https://rufus.akeo.ie. Rufus is a program for "burning" .iso files to USB drives.
6. Run Rufus Portable. Select your device, and change the "New volume label" box to the desired name of the USB boot partition. Change it from "FreeDOS" to "ISO Image". Then, click the disc icon, and select the .iso image you located in step 4.
7. Click start. (Warning, this WILL format the drive!)

Now, your USB is ready to boot Cosmos!

Booting

Follow the steps below if you want to boot into the OS using the USB partition. Not all computers can continue these steps.

1. Shut down your machine and start it again and go to your boot menu (usually by pressing F12; you can locate the method to enter the boot menu for your motherboard on the internet).
2. Select your USB drive you plugged in and installed your Cosmos project.

If Cosmos does not boot see Fix Stuck On Creating ATA IOGroup.

In order to use a VM to debug your operating system again, follow steps 1 to 2, but instead of switching from VMWare to ISO image, select the virtualizer/emulator of choice (by default VMWare).