Bootable USB memory stick
For a while now, I’ve had a DOS based BIOS update for an internal DVD-RW drive. The machine in which the drive is installed doesn’t have a DOS boot partition or Floppy drive, making booting into DOS a little tricky. OK, so I could build a bootable CD with MS-DOS or Windows 98 on it, and there are great instructions and tools to do this here.
But, the BIOS upgrade utility will not work when booted from the device it is trying to upgrade … drat! In the absence of any other usable media I decided that I wanted to use a USB memory stick to boot to MS-DOS and then perform the upgrade. After much searching I discovered a very useful utility from HP that will allow you to format a bootable USB memory stick (not just HP’s own devices) without any pain or hassle at all. You can download the utility yourself from HP’s download site here, and my thanks must go to Oliver Aaltonen for his great instructions here if you get stuck.
Despite my delight I could still not boot on my test machine, an HP tc 1100. It turns out that I had overlooked Oliver’s warning about the capabilities of the BIOS. This all important factor is will make all the difference. Your BIOS must explicitly allow booting from a USB floppy or ZIP drive it would appear, and that just booting from a generic USB device is not enough.
Have fun!
[Please note that none of the tools pointed to in this post are supported by me or Microsoft, and that the appropriate licensing is required for any operating systems or other software you use]