making a flash drive bootable

[QueBert]

I googled and it appears the easiest way is to download a utility from HP that makes their flash drives bootable. I did and ran it. It recognized my drive and claimed it was successful in making it bootable (Sandisk Cruzer Titanium)

I set it up as the first bootable HD in my BIOS, but when I try to boot it goes directly to my main HD and loads XP. Right now I don't have any bootable programs on the drive, but I'm assuming with the HP utility it should at least bring something up? I'm not sure at all how to actually get programs on it to boot, do I need to create an old school autoexec.bat?

I'd like to toss some of the DOS utilities I use on it so I can troubleshoot systems I work on better, it seems like all but the real old system support booting from a USB drive.

Also if anyone knows of a decent program to make a graphical boot menu so I can have it launch utilities on my drive from a menu I create. I've only found EasyBoot but so far it seems very ummm, limited and hard to use. Any suggestions here would be lovely.

 

[imported_iNGEN]

QueBert,
I use a Sandisk Cruzer Mini and this method worked fine for me. Run the "HP Disk Format Tool". Its probably the same tool you mentioned. The HP tool only formats the disk and sets the partition active. After formatting the disk with that tool, you will need boot files. You can use any you are comfortable with from a Google search of "Boot files". Here's a link to the files I use on my bootable thumbdrive. http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

 

[QueBert]

I figured it out, downloaded something called usb_format and it too care of it, now I just gotta get it to load Ultimate Boot CD and I'm set