Creating a Windows XP bootable USB flash drive

For this, you will need an empty USB flash drive, Windows PC (not Vista) and a HP formatting tool. The steps are relatively straightforward:

1. On your Windows PC, install the HP formatting tool. You can download it from http://www.janvit.cz/public/downloads/HPFormattingTool.zip.
2. Run the tool, select your USB drive and that you would like to copy system files to it.
3. Find the system files supplied with the HP formatting tool and start the formatting.
4. Your USB flash drive is now bootable. Restart your computer. If you have your BIOS setup correctly, you can now boot from the USB drive.

Please note, that not all USB sticks can be made bootable. From time to time, you can find one that has problems. Also, a functional USB disk sometimes won’t boot a specific PC. That is just that you know nothing is ever perfect, right!