How to Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive

[Devilfish]

I was wondering is someone knows how to create a bootable USB Flash drive?

I've Google'd and found loads of sites but they all seem over complicated. Does anyone have a tried and tested way of doing it?

I have a copy of XP Pro that I want to put on a USB pen and use that pen to install XP onto a new machine...is that possible?

Cheers

[cunny]

I have only used usb flash drives to boot into dos, never tried using 1 to instal xp

I know there are versions of xp that run off of flash drives to allows disc utilities to be ran without the disc being in use.

[Jaffa]

Sorry DF I thought this was an application you posted and just passed over it cos I have one.

They do seem complicated but I done it a few times so can't be that bad...

You just need USB Multiboot ---> http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.p...e=post&id=1054

Most of the complicated stuff is for advanced usb bootable disc that has Live XP emergency on it or BartPE, you dont need all that.

You basically format usb stick with PEtoUsb the write to the usb with usb multidisc, you can set thre parameters to make it unattended.

Heres a decent guide.

Install XP from USB - Boot Land

[chroma]

stick it in.
go to my computer.
right click and select properties.
select format.
tick the "make bootable" flag

after the format completes stick in your xp cd (or mount the iso in daemon tools)
drag everything over into the flash drive.

voila a bootable xp installer.

the machine will boot to dos and you just need to type setup.exe or whatever the setup executable is called.
alternatively you could make an "autoexec.bat" its just a plain text file with commands in it then renamed extension from txt to bat.

a bat with setup.exe on the root should automaticaly boot into the setup.

[Devilfish]

Thanks guys, I'll give that a go.

[stroner]

I followed this tut for my acer netbook it worked perfect

my ?150 linux 512ram net book is now a ?250-?300 XP 1.5gig beast all for a tenner (for the ram)
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vt_8p0VllY]YouTube - Installing Windows XP on a Netbook Via USB (Acer Aspire One)[/ame]

[firemouth]

I was wondering is someone knows how to create a bootable USB Flash drive?

I've Google'd and found loads of sites but they all seem over complicated. Does anyone have a tried and tested way of doing it?

I have a copy of XP Pro that I want to put on a USB pen and use that pen to install XP onto a new machine...is that possible?

Cheers

could do with finding a way to do this for LINUX too. or, more properly, how to make a usb stick bootable with XP, so it will boot into LINUX. got one prog that claims to do the job. cant make head nor tail of it!

[firemouth]

Thanks guys, I'll give that a go.

how'd you do?

[Devilfish]

I used the site posted in post #4. Seemed to go ok but haven't tried it yet.

[jfish]

this one has worked for me

EEEguides.com: Install Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC

I even slipstreamed SATA drivers into a XP CD and then created XP USB Boot Disk/Pen