boot from usb pen to format a ide disk...

[crazyluigi]

Hi you all!!
please can someone help me...
i'm without dvd drive and no $$$ to replace it at the time and i need to format my disk... and the solution that i see is a pen drive setup... but the main problem is that i don't know how to do it...

[gerbil]

I am surprised that you bothered posting to ask ... if you must borrow a sys to use an optical drive to load up a pendrive .... why not just borrow the optical drive? I am not sure on this... but I have a feeling that windows only installs from cds. Someone else may know for sure.

[crazyluigi]

i know that we must have a portable sys and do some operations in the pen drive to work perfectly but i just don't know wich operations should i realize to it...

[Godsp3ed]

Well you will need a cd-drive to make a pendrive bootable with XP, i.e. you will need the XP files...
If you just CAN'T get a cd-drive...
*I guess you'll have to download XP (Pirated=illegal=irritating microsoft issues at times)
*You'll need a pendrive with a size less than 2 Gb...
*You're Bios should support boot from USB (probably yes in most cases unless its more than 5-7 yrs old)

This is all the info i have...If you want more then u can google it else wait for some replies :)

[caperjack]

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/windowsxpusb

i tried this once ,but only once and it didn't work for me but only tried once and never tried to figure why it didn't work for me,its meant for installing on a mini laptop ,not sure if that makes a difference . it did install for me but would not boot after install i think is what happened it was awhile back,but i never got around to figure out why

[gerbil]

There is this:
http://blaize.net/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=617&Itemid=10
But you still need XP cd and a writer to make an iso file for placing on the thumbdrive.

[evstevemd]

Burning ISO should not be a problem unless you cannot get a neighbor with a CD/DVD burner. In that case you can use internet cafe to do so and it should be heap enough to afford. Is that right