Creating windows xp flash drive boot disk

You can find lists of UFD brands that others have had success with on the Internet. And some that do allow it don't make it easy. On one of my example systems, it was a no-brainer. Let's take a closer look.

I then moved it to the top of the list, as shown in Figure A , thus making it the first device to check during the boot sequence. This particular BIOS also allowed me to press the [F10] key during the boot sequence and select any one of the available bootable devices, so it really wasn't necessary to move it to the top. You'll also need two files from the Windows Server Service Pack 1.

At the time of this writing, the most current version of PE Builder was 3. And although you need just two small files, the only way to get them is to download the entire package. Do not run the Windows Server SP1 executable file! Doing so will completely corrupt Windows XP. We will use a set of special commands to extract the two files and then delete the rest of the package. Installing PE Builder is quick and easy. Just run the installation program and follow the onscreen instructions.

Now, you can begin extracting the two needed files from Windows Server SP1. To save on typing, you can rename the file to something shorter, such as WS-SP1.

To begin, open a Command Prompt window and use the CD command to change to the folder in which you downloaded the Windows Server SP1 executable file. I downloaded the file to a folder called Downloads. Now, to extract the files contained in SP1, type the command. You'll immediately see a dialog box that prompts you to select a folder in which to extract the files and can type the name of the same folder, as shown in Figure G.

Click OK to proceed with the extraction procedure. The setup program will then silently close, which might make you think that something went wrong. Don't worry though.

Note: The above guide works with Windows XP only. Buy Now. Contact US. Insert the USB drive you intend to boot from. Instructions for doing so vary wildly from system to system, but generally entail the following: Reboot the system. Go to the section that contains your boot devices. Exit from the BIOS configuration, saving all changes.

Step 4: Prepping the Hard Disk You need to make sure that your hard drive is partitioned and formatted properly. To repartition and format This procedure will destroy any data on the hard drive : Click the icon on task bar to launch a command line Window. Enter DiskPart to run the built-in disk management utility. For example, try the following: select disk 0 select the first disk. Unplug USB drive during post stage.

Change your BIOS settings back to boot from hard disk again as needed. You can now continue to finish setting up Windows XP. Copyright Power Software Ltd. All rights reserved. For a great many reasons, this is still our preferred method of creating USB boot drives. To load the Windows. NOTE: As the program will state, doing this will erase all data off of the flash drive — so backup first.

If you have any issues, be sure to check out our Common Problems section below. NOTE: This method will delete the entire flash drive, so be sure to back up personal data first.

Once selected, it needs to be wiped clean, have a partition created, and then be formatted. The entire command process is summed-up in this block:. At this point, the Windows setup DVD can be inserted into the drive, or the ISO mounted, and its files copied over to the root folder of the flash drive.

While the company no longer promotes the tool, it supports at least 7 and 8 just fine, so some might prefer to use it over the other solutions. Once downloaded and opened, an ISO must be chosen. If you plan to install Windows 10 on a new system, use it to recover an existing system, or upgrade a previous install of Windows 7 or 8, creating a bootable flash drive is the first step.

The whole process for creating a Windows 10 bootable USB drive can be done by using the Media Creation Tool ; most systems these days will use the bit version, so grab that.

The gallery below outlines each step of the process for the basic method. There are a few things you might need to check first. Depending on where you plan to install Windows 10, you need to check which version you require, Home or Pro. This offers the advantage of being able to keep a backup of the ISO image, as well as create multiple boot drives without having to download the image each time. If you run into problems with the Media Creation Tool when it comes to creating the bootable flash drive, you can use the following method.

In general, we found this method more reliable than using the Media Creation Tool to create the Windows 10 bootable flash drive, and ther are a number of other advantages to using Rufus as well. The tool will only create a single partition up to 32GB and then completely ignore the rest of the drive, and Windows-based operating systems can only handle a single partition on USB flash drives.

First off, we strongly recommend using Rufus bit version to setup XP on a USB flash drive over the other methods, as its success rate is much better. As far as we know, the bit ISO image of XP is the only compatible version that can be put on a bootable flash drive success for XP bit was limited.

We also found that a lot of modern hardware refuses to detect the drive. A number of systems we have tested this with had very mixed results. The USB media does work on a couple of laptops, but with other systems, it just boots up into a blank screen. You can read below for some more general advice as well.

This can be caused by a number of things. The most common is that your system is not setup to detect or boot from USB devices.