Boot from flash drive

[homosapien15]

Alright CL geniuses! My computer has been BSODing lately, and I don't have a functional copy of vista anymore. Thankfully, I was bored once and I have the .iso of my copy of vista on a flash drive, but I never actually tried booting from it, and it isn't working.

I've found a few websites to try and help me, I formatted the drive with fat32, etc etc, but I'm unsure of two things.

Is my flash drive actually bootable? Can I make it bootable?
and
Do I have to mount the ISO as a disk image or anything? Or can I just use the ISO file?

If anyone can find anything to help, I'll be super grateful. Otherwise I'm just gonna clear everything and get windows 7.

[{CLR} ObiTroy]

You'll need to burn the ISO to a DVD and boot from the DVD. No way to use it as is. Do you have another computer you can do this from? Or a friends computer?

The flash drive is bootable (should be) if you set the option in your BIOS. But you need to have something on the flashdrive that it can boot from.

[homosapien15]

Not sure I understand you here. If it is bootable in BIOS, what is this "something" in needs on it to be able to boot?

The only reason I haven't burned to a DVD is because my drive is busted, so I wanted to try something I could do without having to wait another week or so. The rest of my house is filled with macs, so no help there. I have ordered a new drive, so I suppose I'll wait on that.

Before I give up on this though, I've read something about a bootsect command for the flash drive, but I couldn't find much about it.

[{CLR} ObiTroy]

You need boot/system files on it. I've used BartPE for this before, works great. You can google it.

This is also a good source of info:
http://bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

But note that you need a working PC to do this... not sure if you create it on a mac.

[K PhaNTOM]

The only reason I haven't burned to a DVD is because my drive is busted,.

What exactly is working in your computer?

Now that USB bootable version you somehow "got", it should have had a exe called BartPE. Which should be ran, so it can extract onto the drive. It's like making an iso on your drive, but not copy pasta the iso.

[homosapien15]

my mac has a windows partition.

And phantom, for once in my life it IS legit. I had thought I'd put my copy of windows on a flash drive for simplicity....didn't work so hot afterall

[Duke{CLR}]

my mac has a windows partition.

The Jobs won't be happy with this... quick, go out and get an I pad for your penance.

[homosapien15]

haha duke. The only reason I have it is as a remnant of my "Mac gaming" days. Mac is for work, PC is for play.

Well I failed miserably in this quest...so I ordered a new drive, and i'll just burn my iso to disk.

[Duke{CLR}]

haha duke. The only reason I have it is as a remnant of my "Mac gaming" days. Mac is for work, PC is for play.

Well I failed miserably in this quest...so I ordered a new drive, and i'll just burn my iso to disk.

Today is your lucky day I just found a link to this sale in my in box. Newegg.com - Spring Storage Sale! $69.99 1TB HDD, $19.99 Samsung DVD Burner, $44.99 8GB MP3

[mapes]

You need boot/system files on it. I've used BartPE for this before, works great. You can google it.

This is also a good source of info:
http://bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

But note that you need a working PC to do this... not sure if you create it on a mac.

You can also use the winpe stuff. Incidentally if your trying to do this for linux checkout unetbootin. It rocks!

[Colonel_Tighlon]

Why not burn the ISO on one of the Macs?

[homosapien15]

Well I'm good now.

Colonel I just happened to buy one brand of DVD that Macbooks seem to have issues with. I ended up just borrowing a friend's computer, so I'm up and running again.

[Apache Warrior]

Apache