P35=DS3L won't boot from usb flash drive

[bonjonno]

I have a gigabyte P35-DS3L mobo that has been relatively good to me for 2+ years w/ XP Pro. I am trying to install Windows 7 Pro from a Lexar thumb drive. The system refuses to boot from it no matter where I set the bios. I read everything I can find online, formatted the drive a number of ways (FAT16, FAT32 w/diskpart, FAT32 w/ HP usb disk format utility) and nothing works. The bios recognizes the thumb drive; I have even set it to have priority over the hard disk and removed the hard disk altogether from boot sequence. The usb drive barely flashes then the system defaults to the hard drive instantly. Has anyone had luck with this?

 

[bilbat]

I have been working on this! I'm trying to come up with a step-by-step procedure for booting, BIOS flashing, storing CMOS parameters, et al; but I'm having the devil's own time trying to find a USB stick that doesn't 'break' my system - an earlier post is here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261902-30-gigabyte-tale
and I just bought (and returned!) a SanDisk Cruzer, as it triggered the same problem but worse! This time I had to go through the 'formal' procedure to escape the 'boot-looping' blues - but, having seen this before, was prepared: stored a fresh set of CMOS parameters to the BIOS, stuck in a bootable CD to 'catch' the after-recovery boot before it could corrupt my (no longer configured) RAIDs. Part of the problem is that I don't really use the little buggers for much - I have floppies for all these purposes! I suppose, worse comes to worse, I could yank my HyperX and format it... The tool I'm intending to base this on is the HP utility here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839&lang=en&cc=us&mode=3&
I have heard tell it works great - if you do use it, please report back...

 

[Bill_25]

Is your windows 7 an ISo?
just use Unetbootin. It works like a charm.
Just follow the 2 steps its very easy, but will take 20 minutes or more to transfer the iso to the usb drive.
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/install-windows-7-from-usb-drive-requires-2-simple-steps/

Thats the easiest way I know.

 

[inature]

hey i found something much useful http://cyberlifeday.blogspot.com/2009/12/botting-windowslinux-os-any.html

 

[bluc]

To the op did you get it to work? I have a X38-DQ6 and a P35-DS3P neither will boot the flash drive but a msi P45 neo 2 FR boots it fine. I formatted it with official microsoft tool and I tried it by manually formatting with cmd comands but it just wont boot. Help appreciated.

 

[303iD]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1298880 . This worked for me, Cheers!