How do you boot from a usb stick?

Question

I have an ISO that i would like to boot from as my laptop is completely unusable at the moment, It's for a DVD but i can't burn it as i don't have a DVD-burner on my PC. I know it's possible to boot from a USB drive but i don't know how. I tried dragging the iso onto the usb stick and trying to boot, i got a blinking underscore and nothing else. I tried extracting the iso onto the usb stick and had the same result. What am i supposed to be doing?

Answer 1

Its really difficult to find guys like u who dare to do these types of things and 1 thing u must know that ure at right person coz i have booted Windows 7 , windows Vista , Windows xp ....... all of 'em from My pendrive...........



PLEASE vote as Best aswer Dont 4 get dear



first of all if u want to avoid all these tricks then goto internet and download CDBurnerXP and burn your dvd/cd image.. boot it be happy.





But if u have courage and faith

take your pendrive it must be atleast 4 Gb if u have

Windows 7 / Windows vista iso image of around 2.33 - 3.5 Gb if it is of more than that use 8 Gb pendrive( i will use PD instead of pendrive) for windows xp u may use 1Gb PD.



Switch on your system insert your PD .

follow these steps



READ CAREFULLY PLEASE



>for win7 or vista open start menu type cmd right click run as Administrator.for xp just start cmd



1>type diskpart hit enter (ent)

2>list disk

3>select disk 0/1/2/3 or which ever is of the dim as shown same of ur PD but basically it is select disk 1



4>clean

5>create partition primary

6>select partition 1 or the no of partition selected in step 3

7> active

8>FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK

9>ASSIGN

10>EXIT



11>minimize cmd do not close

mount the image using " daemon tool "



check the drive label on which it is mounted D: or E or F whatever it is



here i assume it to be E

12>come to cmd and type the following command

13>E:CD BOOT

or move into the folder containing bootsect.exe file

14>CD BOOT

or till you are inside folder that i m talking abt it will look ilke E:\boot>

15>BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 F: here F: is the letter of our PD

16>Exit

command prompt closes



now your PD is bootable and yre almost done !!!!!!!!



copy all the files in the E: drive all means all everything which is inside iso must be copied ...................



DONE





restart your system keep on pressing F8 then u will see the boot menu select your pendrive and hit enter u will boot



OR

do not restart your system

just go into the PD start the setup and rest will be done automatic.



if u have any problem contact me

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

Answer 2

It is possible. I am assuming you have changed your boot settings so it the boot priority is set to the USB device? From what you are saying it seems like its trying to boot from something else and not the USB device.



The only thing I can think is if you use a friends computer to install the operating system onto the USB device. That might work better.

Answer 3

The laptop has to be able to boot off of USB, not all can. When you urn on the laptop, look for something that says something like "Press F10 for Boot Menu". To be able to boot off of the USB stick the ISO has to be extracted onto the USB drive. Also What is the ISO? What are you trying to boot up?

Answer 4

I don't know if it's possible with XP (it is with Linux, but XP came out before flash drives were popular). If it is, plug the stick into the computer and boot off of the XP CD. If the flash drive shows up in the list of places to install Windows, choose that and then set your computer to boot from the USB drive.

Answer 5

You need a specific program to make your USB drive bootable.



Check out this blog for some hints.



http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2004/10/utility-to-make-usb-flash-driv.html

Answer 6

go to BIOS settings in your computer and make the computer first read from USB then CD rom second HARD DRIVE THIRD and so forth!!!

Answer 7

why don't you download free dvd burner? you make things complicated.