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Jan 12, 2010

Bootable USB as Windows XP OS installer

Let me clarity it again this is applicable to Windows XP Operating System only.

These are the things you need:

- A working computer with Windows XP OS installed.

- Windows XP Installer (CD/DVD).

- A Flash Drive with at least 4 GB in size.

Here is a note you should consider before following the steps below:

Not all computers have the support on booting from a USB drive. So make sure that your computer has the support to boot USB device and you can check it in your BIOS. Please be careful on altering the settings of your BIOS and be sure to memorize the default settings.

After checking all necessary things to consider above, you can now proceed.

So these are the steps on making Bootable USB drive for Windows XP OS installation:

Step 1: First, you have to download a 3rd party program called MBRWizard and once you download it, you will need to extract the file. In this example we will download the folder to the desktop for easy access.

Step 2: Format your USB drive. You can do this by going to My computer and find the USB drive and then right click it, then select Format. Make sure NTFS is selected and the Quick Format is checked and click OK.

Step 3: Open the command prompt of your computer by going to Start > Program > Accessories > Command Prompt and type the following commands:

cd Desktop/MBRWiz2.0/

MBRWiz /list

Find the USB drive in the list appears after entering the commands. Assuming you have only one hard drive in your computer, it will usually be Disk 1.

Step 4: Type the following to make your USB drive active: (where X is the number of your disk from step 3 then close the command prompt.)

mbrwiz /disk=X /active=1

Step 5: The next step is making your USB Installation Device.

Insert your Windows XP installer on your DVD/CD drive. Then, locate the drive letter of your DVD/CD and USB drive on your My Computer. On my computer, my DVD/CD drive is F: while my USB drive is G:.

Step 6: Now type the following commands and press Enter after each line:

F: (this is the drive letter of the drive with Windows installation files on it)

CD BOOT

BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 G: (this is the drive letter of your USB drive)








Step 7: Now go to My Computer and copy everything from your Windows XP installer to your USB drive. So now, you have a fully functional bootable version of Windows XP on your USB drive.

Step 8: Finally, we are on the last step. The last step is to enter your computer BIOS. Restart your computer and enter the Setup or BIOS interface. Find the portion where you can edit the Disk priorities. Change the First Boot Priority to USB drive to complete the process.

If you made it this far, my congratulations your bootable USB is fully functional. If not, please read through the steps again, maybe you miss something.

So I think that’s all.

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