Make Your USB a Bootable USB Device

I recently had to take on the task of making a USB flash drive bootable into windows DOS so we could run a program (Ghost 8.0). The program I needed to run in DOS was Ghost 8.0 and I had it on floppy disks. More and more computers are moving away from the floppy drives and I wanted an easier more reliable way to boot my program. So I went to work and created a USB flash drive that would boot Ghost 8.0.

The very first thing you should do is get into your systems bios and make sure that your computer has the ability to boot from a USB device. If it doesn't have the ability then there is no sense creating a bootable USB device. Once you have verified that your system will allow it then you will want to research your Flash Drive on Google and make sure it is bootable as well. I used 5 different USB devices all differing in storage space and manufacturing companies and I was successful on every one of them, but I suggest checking before you start it might save you some time.

Now that we have all the verification crap out of the way we will need to create a boot disk that will load Windows 98. The easiest way to do this is to get the simple program online at (www.bootdisk.com). This is a simple tool that will create this disk for you. Once you have downloaded the program, run it and follow the on screen instructions. The instructions are very simple so I don't need to explain the instructions, you will simply click yes twice and you're finished.

Once you have the boot disk then you will need to get a couple of other programs that will help you format your USB flash drive so you can make it bootable. To do this you will want to get HP's flash drive format tool (http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/23839.html). Again a simple tool that is self explanatory so I will save you the details on that also.

Once your USB is formatted properly you need one last tool, this tool will make the USB bootable. You will need to get a tool called MKBT from Bart's boot disks (www.nu2.nu/mkbt/). Download the tool and extract all the files. Extract all of the files to a specific folder, I used C:/flash_boot/temp. It's important that you put these files some place you can easily access, it will make the job much easier.

Once the files have been extracted then you will need to click the Start button and then choose the Run command. A box will open up on your screen and in that text box type the letters CMD and click enter. This will take you to a dos prompt and you will need to get into the right directory where you saved your MKBT file. So if you saved your files in C:/flash_boot/temp/ you will need to get into that directory before proceeding.

Once in the directory you will want to type the following command

mkbt -c a:bootsect.bin (make sure your bootable floppy is in the floppy drive)

Once this has finished running then you will want to type

mkbt -x bootsect.bin E: (or what ever the letter is that is assigned to your USB device)

Once this is finished you can close all the windows you have open. Now all that is left is to copy all the program files over to your USB device and then reboot your computer.

Once you have rebooted you will want to get into the system bios and make some settings changes so that you will be able to boot to the USB flash drive. Some mother boards won't allow this, so you should check if your mother board will boot to a USB device before you starting this tutorial. Once you have made the changes (which will vary depending on your mother board) then exit the bios and it should boot to a DOS prompt where you can then locate your program and execute it.

If you did everything right you should be able to access the program and use it. If you made a mistake you will have to start over and go through the steps more carefully. This is all you need to know in order to make your USB flash drive bootable. I hope it helps you to successfully create this helpful tool.