BIOS or/and USB Stick problem

robinbredin · 16 May 2011 at 16:05

What it is, I have a Dell Inspiron 570 with Win 7 HP with SP1, and BIOS A05. I formatted a USB stick to these instructions HERE, and can't boot off the stick. I have tried BIOS A04 as well, also I have tried Win 7 Pro(Retail), and Win Vista(Retail) to no luck. Is anybody having problems booting off a USB stick with Win 7. What happens is,

1. Put in USB stick to USB port.

2. Reboot System, then Press F12.

3. Select USB Disk 25X( That what it says on the F12 menu).

4. Press Enter.

What happens then is, a message comes up saying, "Remove Disks or Other Media", then "Press any Key to Restart". I'm almost sure it's not my 256MB USB stick, it could be the BIOS which is stopping the USB Stick from booting, if so, then i have a problem. Any ideas. Thanks Robin

freddie64 · 16 May 2011 at 16:35

Have you got a section in bios called "Hard Drive Priority, or something like that?

If so, see if the usb stick is listed and set it as the first drive to boot from.

I have to do this on mine to boot from usb.

Tonester007 · 16 May 2011 at 22:07

robinbredin said:
... I formatted a USB stick to these instructions HERE, and can't boot off the stick.

... I'm almost sure it's not my 256MB USB stick

256 Meg

From checking those instructions above, your USB key needs to be at least 4 GB in size.
Do you have a bigger one?

Sin_Chase · 16 May 2011 at 22:08

You cannot fit bootable Win7 media onto a 256MB pen drive.

To see if your Motherboard will support it on a larger, more appropriate USB flash drive for Win 7 make something else.

Example - Prepare the 256MB drive with memtest and boot it. Use:

http://www.memtest.org/download/4.20/memtest86+-4.20.usb.installer.zip

freddie64 · 17 May 2011 at 06:23

I thought he might be making it bootable for some other reason.