I have just bought a Kingmax USB1.1 Flash Drive (a ‘pen drive’) that, according to the specifications can be used as a ZIP HDD boot device with WinXP and a mobo that recognises ZIP HDD as a boot device in bios. My A7N8X deluxe mobo does support a whole range of boot device options including ZIP HDD. However, no matter what config I try (even disabling all boot devices except ZIP HDD), it won’t boot from the pen. Interestingly it still boots from HDD 0 even when I’ve disabled this in bios. I have a friend with exactly the same board and pen drive and he can’t get it to recognise it as a zip boot device either. This is making me think this is a bug with the mobo, rather than a problem with the pen drive. Has anyone had similar a experience or got any suggestions for other bios set ups (I’m using latest bios version for the board, by the way) ?

Have you tried using a DOS boot disk with USB drivers, as you are running XP create an MSDOS boot floppy and add following to the CONFIG.SYS file, you may need to unhide the files first: device=usbaspi.sys /w/v device=di1000dd.sys The first file is by Panasonic and the second by Novac links to download here; http://www.mwpms.uklinux.net/usbfire.txt You may need to format the drive in pure DOS FAT16 to get it to boot from BIOS. You will need the file FORMAT.COM from a W9x or ME bootable floppy available from www.bootdisk.com If you read: http://www.phoenix.com/en/products/phoenix+cme+firstbios/system+firmware/products/phoenixbios.htm and I quoute "The Advanced USB Boot provides enumeration and configuration of an USB CD-ROM, Zip, and Hard Disk drive during POST that enables the ability to boot to DOS from an USB CD-ROM, Zip, or Hard Disk drive that is connected to a system either directly or through a hub(s). Additionally USB CD-ROM, Zip, or Hard Disk drive support enables the use of an USB CD-ROM, Zip, or Hard Disk drive while in a DOS environment." The important point is DOS there is no DOS whatsoever in W2K/XP!

btw do have have system files transferred to pen drive if not then use a W98OEM boot floppy modified to load USB drivers and SYS the drive!

Thanks for the detailed reply! I'll try what u have suggested. The drive actually comes with a utility disk that is supposed to create the boot dosk for you...it actually downloads XP system files onto the drive. In addition, I added FDISK, FORMAT, SCNDISK etc from an ME boot disk, just in case i needed them. I partitioned the disk with a 10Mb boot area and a 246Mb storage area for file transfers etc. All partitions are fully recognised and are working perfectly, and the boot area hold all the necessary system files in exactly the same way that a floppy boot disk does...i checked against a FDD I created earlier. The documentation with the drive specifically states that it can be configured as a boot floppy or boot zip drive, but it only works as a boot floppy with Win98. Under XP it states that it has to be configured as a Zip HDD...that's what I have set it up as. I'm just a little pissed off that it highlights the bootable feature of the drive and makes no mention of any reasons why it shouldn't work. Thanks again tho' m8 !!

You are stating that if you set it up as a boot floppy you can then boot W98? Having re-read your postings what exactly are you trying to achieve? do you want to boot XP off this Drive?

I want to simply boot into DOS...i.e use the USB pen drive instead of a floppy as a simple boot device.

OK then try what I said earlier you may have to reformat but if you use Win98 boot disk or later to SYS the drive, then it will read FAT32 partitions. You can read NTFS as well from DOS: http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm good luck