Make a USB drive a key to boot into XP

Posted by tech master  |  at  1:03 PM No comments

The USB booting feature is usually found in most new motherboards. For older boards, a BIOS update is required.

For this task, a USB drive of capacity of at least 256MB is required.

Use the "USB Disk Storage Format Tool" from HP for formatting the USB drive. Choose the USB Drive to be formatted, and select "FAT" under "File System". Enter a name of less than 11 charactersfor Volume Label, and click Start to begin formatting. For a 1.1 USB port, this takes no more than a minute.

After having selected "Show hidden files and folders" and deactivating "Hide protected operating system files", navigate to the root directory on which the windows is located, usually C:\. Copy the boot.ini, ntdlr, and NTDETECT.COM files from that directory to the USB flash drive. Rename the "boot.ini" in C:\ to "boot.bak". Windows will now not be able to boot from the harddisk and the USB drive will be the key to unlocking the computer.

Now to check whether you USB drive works or not! Restart your computerand selectthe USB drive as the First Boot device in the BIOS. For this test, deactivate the "Quick boot" and "Show Full Screen Logo" options in order to be able to monitor any BIOS-reported activities. Also, the "USB Legacy Support" and USB 2.0 Controller" options need to be activated if available. Save your changes and exit the BIOS and restart.

If you encounter any problem booting then leave a comment here and i will try my best to help you.