Format usb flash drive windows xp

What about Windows Vista? But first…. Some solutions listed on this page require a Windows disc image. ISOs are available from a number of sources, but most people will acquire them after purchasing the OS online through Microsoft, or through some other related Microsoft service.

Only the ISOs directly supplied by Microsoft would have static hashes. How the image was captured as well will have an effect on how the final boot drive turns out, so stick to official sources where possible.

Other tools exist that accomplish the same thing, but these are the only ones we can personally recommend. However, we prefer Rufus because we find it loads a lot quicker, and feels a bit faster, too.

For a great many reasons, this is still our preferred method of creating USB boot drives. To load the Windows. NOTE: As the program will state, doing this will erase all data off of the flash drive — so backup first.

If you have any issues, be sure to check out our Common Problems section below. NOTE: This method will delete the entire flash drive, so be sure to back up personal data first.

Once selected, it needs to be wiped clean, have a partition created, and then be formatted. The entire command process is summed-up in this block:. At this point, the Windows setup DVD can be inserted into the drive, or the ISO mounted, and its files copied over to the root folder of the flash drive. While the company no longer promotes the tool, it supports at least 7 and 8 just fine, so some might prefer to use it over the other solutions.

Once downloaded and opened, an ISO must be chosen. If you plan to install Windows 10 on a new system, use it to recover an existing system, or upgrade a previous install of Windows 7 or 8, creating a bootable flash drive is the first step.

The whole process for creating a Windows 10 bootable USB drive can be done by using the Media Creation Tool ; most systems these days will use the bit version, so grab that.

The gallery below outlines each step of the process for the basic method. There are a few things you might need to check first. Depending on where you plan to install Windows 10, you need to check which version you require, Home or Pro. This offers the advantage of being able to keep a backup of the ISO image, as well as create multiple boot drives without having to download the image each time.

If you run into problems with the Media Creation Tool when it comes to creating the bootable flash drive, you can use the following method. In general, we found this method more reliable than using the Media Creation Tool to create the Windows 10 bootable flash drive, and ther are a number of other advantages to using Rufus as well.

The tool will only create a single partition up to 32GB and then completely ignore the rest of the drive, and Windows-based operating systems can only handle a single partition on USB flash drives. First off, we strongly recommend using Rufus bit version to setup XP on a USB flash drive over the other methods, as its success rate is much better.

As far as we know, the bit ISO image of XP is the only compatible version that can be put on a bootable flash drive success for XP bit was limited. We also found that a lot of modern hardware refuses to detect the drive.

A number of systems we have tested this with had very mixed results. The USB media does work on a couple of laptops, but with other systems, it just boots up into a blank screen. You can read below for some more general advice as well. This can be caused by a number of things. The most common is that your system is not setup to detect or boot from USB devices.

Try a different ISO image if at all possible. Attempting to install with your flash drive plugged into a USB 3. You may still use a USB 3. If no USB 2. This was mentioned previously in the Windows 10 section, but if you are creating a USB boot drive for Windows 10 and your 64GB drive is only showing 32GB available, then you need to recreate your boot drive with Rufus.

Step 2. In the elevated Command Prompt window, type "diskpart" and press enter to launch the tool. To format write-protected USB drive, you will have to run "attributes disk clear readonly" command first, then you will be able to format write-protected USB drive via cmd. If your USB cannot be formatted due to the damaged file system, there are great chances that you cannot format it successfully with DiskPart, either.

Step 3. Here, the best free USB format tool is introduced. So, you can easily and effectively format your USB drive now. Then, execute the following command in order. Download the best free USB format tool If your USB cannot be formatted due to the damaged file system, there are great chances that you cannot format it successfully with DiskPart, either.