USB drives and portable disks are more in than Floppy drives and CDs these days. So here is a short tutorial on how you can make a USB drive or a portable drive a bootable disk to rescue system and run your System (Windows) without a floppy or CD disk.
Follow these steps to make USB drive bootable
- Download two files ‘Command File’ and ‘HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool’.
- Make a folder with name ‘BOOT’ and extract the file ‘Command’ in BOOT folder.
- Now install the other utility (HP USB Disk Storage Format).
- Open installed utility (HP USB Disk Storage Format) and in ‘Device’ filed select device that you want to make bootable (USB drive etc) Also check the option ‘Create A DOS Startup Disk’.
- Now press the browse button to locate the BOOT folder and hit the Start button.
These simple steps will make your USB drive (or any other portable drive) a bootable drive. To use this bootable drive on any computer always go to Bios Setting to select USB drive as ‘First Boot Device’.
Related Posts
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- How to Make a Ghost Bootable USB
- How to Partition a USB Flash Drive
- How To Put An Image As USB Background
- Format USB Drive with Free Tool
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice Trick.
Thanks
useful for me.
That’s Great!
I really Appreciate it.
Keep it Up.
Regards
Jenney MaC
nice trick thanx
nice trick thanx
(GOD BLESS U)
Awesome trick, very useful.
Thanx
very helpful tutorial…..
….
……….thanx a lot
hi, guess i needed some help here. I installed the hp utility on my vista (32bit) but when I tried to open the app, it tells me “permission denied, need admin right”. But my account is an admin right account. Is vista the issue here? any or comments would be appreciated. thanks…
Bel, Rightclick the hp utility and choose ‘Run as admin…’. Should work.
hey annabel right clickon it in your start bar and clickrun as administrator
hi, when i click start it says “there are no valid DOS system file at the specified location”.
please help.
Thanks! Well done, you’re the only person that’s got it right!
Its of no use for me… as, it is making the drive windows 98 bootable, which can not read Windows XP NTFS Partitions.
if the usb connot detect
worked well. thanks!
If the USB ext HDD is too big, you cannot format in FAT or FAT32, therefore you cannot make a DOS startup disk. I think you should make it clear up to what size USB ext device you can use.
Thank you Sir. I wish I hadn’t had to read so much b.s. on the net before finding your perfect solution. It worked a treat and has allowed me to make a ghost image on my Eee PC.
Hello,
Thanks this was very helpefull….but i want to install windows aftel this…
I make the USB bootable and copy windows to USB stick
I restart the computer and boot from usb..and i run setup.exe to install windows xp ..and it dosn’t work…
I don’t have a CD-rom to instal from it
Could you help me ??
tank you
i’ve a ques
“will it work on my dell optiplex GX1″
although it doesn’t support boot from USB in Bios
Hi all
To be able to boot from a usb(key or flashdrive), motherboard(bios) has to support it. Most newer do, not all. Then the usb key itself must support booting, not all usb keys boot no matter how good utilities are. Few do.
I have had over years bought 10 usbs. Only 3 boot, and they are all small. Majors ones, a 4g, 8g and 32g don’t boot.
All people above and beyond who succeeded must have above conditions.
Will appreciate to hear the specifics (name, model etc.) of the usb from someone who has bootable usb, 8gb or larger.
I can say here 1gb Penny, 2gb Adata, 4gb Kingston DataTraveler, 8GB Patriot, 32GB OCZ Atv don’t boot.
it always workable whatever condition
It worked for me on a 16gb kingston usb 2 memory stick. My netbook Dell L2100 booted like a win98 and quickly gave me c prompt.
Only way I could work after this was to put ghost or other software on the actual memory stick and use it that way. You can only work with what is there on memory stick. it does not let you connect to eg external cdrom, or another memory stick.
Any way this workable solution got me somehwhere and I manage to take image of netbook on to memory stick. Thanks.
Saffi
hey thnx man now i can install win xp on my mini leptop …… thnx alot dude
it wont work! *** there is no valid DOS system files at the specific location***
what should i do??
THANK YOU!!