Recovery ISO not booting from USB

[matrix86]

My netbook had gotten a nasty virus that made my XP partition nearly unusable. I put the recovery CD in my desktop computer, and inserted a blank USB...then used the HP utility to put the Win98 boot files onto my usb drive to make it bootable, and then used ImgBurn to make a copy of the ISO from the recovery disk for my netbook, and put it on the USB. The USB boots, but i'm at a command prompt window that just shows:

C:\>

Clearly i'm supposed to type something here, but I have no idea what. Did I do everything right in the beginning? If so, what do I do at this screen? I leave for vacation in a few days and need XP reinstalled ASAP.

Thanks in advance for any help.

PS,
I did try going back to my last restore point, but I must have created it after the virus got on my netbook, because restoring did nothing, and I no longer have the built in recovery partition (which allowed me to just hit "F3" to reinstall Windows).

 

[captaincranky]

I have no idea, but a Google search turns up pages of material; http://www.google.com/search?client...p&q=Boot+Windows++from+USB&btnG=Google+Search

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Try it again?
Theres tons of similar tutorials using bartpe and stuff, I won't bother copy and pasting it.

 

[matrix86]

I've tried numerous tools, guides, tutorials...nothing seems to work. I've followed everything i've seen exactly the way I was told to, yet nothing seems to work...perhaps there is something wrong with my reinstallation disk? I've never used it. It's just been sitting in its case in my drawer for over year.

The only two methods that even came close to working were the one I listed in my post, and using "wintoflash". wintoflash did all the transferring, but upon booting, all I get is a black screen with the flashing "_". Although, with wintoflash, I couldn't just tell it to transfer from the CD to the USB, I had to go into the CD and select the folder that had the bootfiles...so something has to be wrong with the CD...right?

I think i'm going to just go to the store tomorrow, buy a usb cd drive, put in the disk and see what happens, and then just return the drive later on..."no, nothing's wrong with it. Got it as a gift but don't need it."

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

I don't know, these things tend to be iffy.

 

[captaincranky]

I think i'm going to just go to the store tomorrow, buy a usb cd drive, put in the disk and see what happens, and then just return the drive later on..."no, nothing's wrong with it. Got it as a gift but don't need it."

Classy move..

 

[DelJo63]

hmm; I've struggled with USB boot for sometime. Using several different tools,
I've never gotten a USB device to actually boot on my laptop.

It turns out that booting from USB requires BIOS support (should be obvious) and if
it is not configured or doesn't support that feature - - you're just out of luck.

 

[superty12]

98?

You put Windows 98 files on there? If correct that Windows 98 files are on there, then the command prompt should be there. If you can get hold of a Windows XP disk, do a clean install. Backup all files that are not infected before doing so.