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If you're still in the mythical world of oxidized to support Windows and use the old MS-DOS in the event of an emergency, to understand the perfection that is already dealing with diskettes something terribly uncomfortable. Learn how to remove the road, using a USB pendrive as startup disk.

The situations may be many: You must rescue a dark file a partition on Windows 98, you need a BIOS upgrade, or requires CD-ROM under DOS so urgent. These and many other problems can you remember how painful it can be to find a disk somewhere, ask who is in good physical condition, format, convert it to boot disk, and while calling for a candle lighting unit floppy has not been damaged for some mysterious reason.



Fortunately, technology can make this process much simpler, and using the USB pendrives daily.
With the help of a couple of programs, you can make that little pencil that you have thrown in a corner, it becomes a valuable tool which can take us out of trouble.
Unless subjected to extreme abuse, the pen is much stronger than the flimsy floppy disks, which in addition to already be almost extinct, they start throwing errors after reading a couple of uses.

The only requirement to use a critic as pendrive boot disk is that the computer is sufficiently modern for:
A - Have at least one USB port and
B? can start using it.
The physical presence of a USB port is easy to detect, but it depends on the computer's BIOS that there is support for a boot using a USB port.
You should refer to your motherboard manual to confirm if this kind of support, and how to activate it.
Some cards have the option to choose the boot device without changing the configuration. When you start your computer, look on the screen similar to one legend Press F12 for Boot Menu.
This option will activate a boot menu that allows you to help choose the device you must start the system. Just as simple to pick the pen and ready.

Now, to create a startup disk in a pen, the traditional method would require you to use a diskette with system files inside. But if the idea is not to depend on diskettes, what would be the point? If all this is logical, we present a very interesting.



Virtual Floppy Drive

As the name says, this program creates a virtual floppy drive. The best part is that created so that Windows thinks there is a diskette in the drive. This saves you two potential problems, which are not having a physical disk in hand, or directly to a computer has no floppy drive (laptop, for example). To download, just click here, and then click on Download. The program is in zip format, so you need to decompress a temporary folder. Now, to make it work:


Driver tab, and start with Install marked rojo1) vfdwin.exe Run the file, and you will see the control panel of the program, showing the contents of the Driver tab. Click Install, and then Start. This starts the driver that emulates the floppy.


The option to assign a letter unidad2) Then click on the tab Drive0, and click the Change button. They must choose a letter to the virtual drive. We recommend that you use B:. Check that you have a tick in the box next




3) Then click on Open / Create, in the new window just click Create, you should not change anything else. As a precaution do not close the window of the VFD, or you may need to repeat the entire process. That's it! Go to My Computer (or team if you're on Vista), and you'll see a floppy drive with the letter B:.



4) Now, just give it to the second button to the new drive, and choose Format. In the new window tick the box to create a startup disk from MS-DOS, and starts operation. The format will be almost immediately, because you're working with a virtual drive.

Well, when you have a boot diskette with files in it. Now, to move the pen, you need a program.



HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool

No, not crazy. The program was made by Hewlett-Packard, but it serves pendrive for almost everything that exists out there. It's simple to use, so the only thing that is difficult to achieve. The official website of HP is no longer available, but you can download it by clicking here ->
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.

The file is in zip format, but you'll see the installer in it. Run, and is installed on your computer. Do not worry, it takes up very little space.




1) The main window presents you with some options. First you can see if the device was detected pendrive. If you have more than one connected, you can choose what to submit to the process. Then there is the File System. You should use FAT32, unless you are aiming to give support to some very old version of Windows 95 (which would be a little strange, a computer with Windows 95 has a USB hard), or you're some sort of incompatibility. If so, uses FAT16.



2) You can put a name to pendrive under Volume Label, but it is completely optional. Then check the box next to Create a DOS startup disk. If you are using a relatively modern Windows (2000, XP, Vista), just the option using DOS system files located at available. Escógela, and as a location for files, specify the virtual disk you created earlier (in our example, B).



3) The only remaining start format. The program will give you a warning before you start, if you're not sure to (remember that the pendrive is formatted, if you have information stored, do a backup before!). The operation will be very quick, and when you submit a detailed report.

4) Done! Already have your pendrive become boot disk. Now is when you close the Virtual Floppy Drive. To turn it off completely, click Close Drive0 under the tab and click on "do not ask you to do. Then go to the Driver tab and click on the first stop, and then Uninstall. Done that, you can close the program.

The rest depends on you. With some minor adjustments, you can use your new pendrive for different things, from helping to restore the functioning of a computer, able to play those old DOS games and missed much it costs to run the latest versions of Windows. Good luck!