How to Make a USB Pen Drive Bootable

How to Make a USB Pen Drive Bootable

The Guide is based on creating/getting a USB Pen Drive to boot on the DFI NF4 series mobo. The second part shows how to flash your bios from the pen drive.

Part 1

1. The easiest way to do this is with a floppy drive, if you don't have one, there is an alternative method at the bottom of the guide.
2. For XP users insert a blank floppy disc into the drive, open My Computer and right click on your floppy drive and choose "Format" from the popup.
3. Make sure the 'create a bootable system disk' option is checked. This will add the system files needed by the USB drive from the floppy. Click 'OK' to format the disk.



4. HP are constantly changing this utility, and as such the version you download might differ from the one in the guide HP Drive Key Boot Utility V2.1.8. Its intended obviously for HP usb drives but works fine with most other usb drives.
5. Plug in your USB drive and run the HP USB disk storage tool.
6. Ensure that the tool has found the correct drive in the "Device" box. Change the "File System" to "FAT". Check the "Create a DOS startup disk" option, and in the "using DOS system files located at:" window, enter "A:\" to point the program to your floppy disk or browse to it. Now click 'Start'. The program will create the necessary boot files on the USB drive.



7. Reboot your pc, when you see the post screen hit the Escape key, this will bring up a Boot Menu screen. Choose your USB drive from the list and hit Enter.



8. If all has went well you should have rebooted to the C:\ prompt. Congratulations you have just made a Bootable USB pen drive.

Alternative Method for users with no Floppy drives For users without a floppy drive download the XP Custom Boot disc HERE. This is a .exe file that contains all of the system files that you will need. Extract the files to a folder using Winimage etc. In Step 6. Point the HP USB utility to the folder containing the XP Custom Boot files.

Notes: Some USB pen drives do NOT work, mp3 type pen drives don't work or at least the ones i have tried do not, only a dedicated pen drive should be used. The Corsair Flash Voyager USB Pen Drive work perfect.