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For starters this is still a new science and many people have had good luck with at least one of these methods and others have not. Note that flash drives are often also called thumb drives, keychain drives, pendrives, etc. The NEWEST methods are listed last on this page, starting with Method 7 for Vista/Win7.
SOFTWARE METHODS
Method 1 - Try these 2 USB Flash Drive Utilities by HP/Compaq. They work with Most other brands of flash drives as well.
hpflash2.zip HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. Formerly called hpflash1.zip
HP Drive Key Boot Utility Version 7.41
Download
"I would put a little extra in there." Says a fan who emailed me with no name:)
For the downloads section I use nLite to make and create the image file as you can import the service packs and do some tweaking to the install files.
http://www.nliteos.com/download.html
1. Install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and run the program.
2. Select the Device and the File system from the drop down menus and click start.
3. Close the above program and install and run the HP Drive Key Boot Utility. Selecting the appropriate drive letter. Click Next.
4.Select the circle on the top that says create New or Replace Existing Configuration. Click Next.
5. Select the circle labeled Hard Drive. Click Next.
6. Select Create New Filesystem. Click Next.
7. Select the circle labeled HP Firmware Flash Package. Click Next.
Click Finish.
Method 2 - Working and good : Boot-USB-Stick
Method 3 - For Booting Linux and all kind of Windows : UNetbootin
Method 4 - Recommended for Visitors: WinToFlash
Method 5 - Old but classy : WiNToBootic
COMMAND LINE TECHNIQUES
(Best and fully working)But typical.
Bootable USB guide, here we assume that you are using either Vista or Windows 7 to create a bootable USB.
1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.
2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.
3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:
DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no. is Disk 1.
4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
(Format process may take few seconds)
ASSIGN
EXIT
Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.
5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “G” as my USB drive letter.
6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:
6.1. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
d:
cd d:\boot
6.2. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
bootsect /nt60 g:
(Where “G” is your USB drive letter)
7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.
You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).
Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.
hpflash2.zip HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. Formerly called hpflash1.zip
HP Drive Key Boot Utility Version 7.41
Download
"I would put a little extra in there." Says a fan who emailed me with no name:)
For the downloads section I use nLite to make and create the image file as you can import the service packs and do some tweaking to the install files.
http://www.nliteos.com/download.html
1. Install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and run the program.
2. Select the Device and the File system from the drop down menus and click start.
3. Close the above program and install and run the HP Drive Key Boot Utility. Selecting the appropriate drive letter. Click Next.
4.Select the circle on the top that says create New or Replace Existing Configuration. Click Next.
5. Select the circle labeled Hard Drive. Click Next.
6. Select Create New Filesystem. Click Next.
7. Select the circle labeled HP Firmware Flash Package. Click Next.
Click Finish.
Method 2 - Working and good : Boot-USB-Stick
Method 3 - For Booting Linux and all kind of Windows : UNetbootin
Method 4 - Recommended for Visitors: WinToFlash
Method 5 - Old but classy : WiNToBootic
.............................................................................................................................................................................
COMMAND LINE TECHNIQUES
(Best and fully working)But typical.
Bootable USB guide, here we assume that you are using either Vista or Windows 7 to create a bootable USB.
1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.
2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.
3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:
DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no. is Disk 1.
4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
(Format process may take few seconds)
ASSIGN
EXIT
Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.
5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “G” as my USB drive letter.
6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:
6.1. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
d:
cd d:\boot
6.2. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
bootsect /nt60 g:
(Where “G” is your USB drive letter)
7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.
You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).
Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.
