Boot Into Windows From A USB Stick???

[Exahertz]

How could I configure a USB stick to have all the nessaceary files to boot into Windows XP should something get corrupt on my hard drive? My BIOS does recognize the USB drive and allows me to set it as a boot option.
Doesnt Windows come with an option to make a boot disk? could i just copy those files onto the USB stick?

And what other backup data would you recomend i keep on a 512mb stick to recover XP should something else go wrong???

Thanks.

[zanzabar]

u can make a recovery disk with the boot disk

to get a usb stick u need to find "Portable Windows XP Live" it comes in pro and home, or use windows CE, u may have to go through illegitimate channels to get them, CE can be hard to get and portable was only made for tech professionals and given out through microsoft for about a year, that will get u into a live usb stick so u could backup not your copy

[W1zzard]

the XP USB driver will always reset the bus when it loads and thus lose access to the boot device (same happens when you put the XP installer on a USB key to boot from it).

it seems you can transplant some windows 2003 usb driver to get around this, google is your friend

[BeastNotro]

Knoppix or even Bart PE are LIVE CD bootable disks .

Now Bart PE also can be put onto a USB stick.

[Exahertz]

I understand i can load a whole other OS and access the harddrives. but im looking to make a boot disk out of a USB stick or even a CD-R (i have no floppy :p: ) so if anything happens to my current XP install i can pop one of those in and get back into that OS to try to load a restore point or access the regestry hives if need be.

[zanzabar]

the windows disk has the built in

[BeastNotro]

I understand i can load a whole other OS and access the harddrives. but im looking to make a boot disk out of a USB stick or even a CD-R (i have no floppy :p: ) so if anything happens to my current XP install i can pop one of those in and get back into that OS to try to load a restore point or access the regestry hives if need be.

bartpe and knoppix are bootable cd's or dvd... and bart can be out on to a usb to boot up and u can access hd's then . which u can acesss windows files too.. as for restore points ... there is no CD/DVD or any programs that i am aware of that actually allows you to do a restore point or load form restore point for windows after windows is corrupted.. you can only try a REPAIR option with the windows CD or DVD.

Are u wanting to boot to access hd's and back up . then thats the way to.. or simply buy external hd and backup 1-2 times a week.