nopants

That doesn't seem to work either. It's worth pointing out that HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors does reflect the correct Background color. In either case the background color is still black. So far I have tried Winlogon \Windows\system32\config\DEFAULT \Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\ntuser.dat -nopants

Instead of using a full bitmap that will be stretched depending on resolution, I use a small centered bitmap and match the background color to it. Changing the background in WinPE 1.6 works but always defaults to black in WinPE 2.0. I am applying this reg entry to the DEFAULT hive: [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors] "Background"="0 78 152" I also tried modifying the Winlogon\Background reg entry to no avail. Any ideas? I am thinking I might just switch to black or go with a full screen bitmap. -nopants

(sorry for the delayed response) Have you tried FAT32? I changed my script to format NTFS and now I can build a bootable USB key from WinXP. I would prefer to stick with FAT32 but will take what I can get. I also had to change the "Safe Removal Policy" ("Optimize for Performance") to allow the format to NTFS to occur.

Well... it's definately the format command. The format command from Vista doesn't run on WinXP. Time to look around to see what I can find.

The /u command WAS for 'unconditional' which is a carry-over from the old DOS format command that my brain will not retire. /Q /BACKUP (also undocumented) will allow for an automated format... it seems. For kicks I tried the HP format utility to see if that would help. No luck. I created all of this originally within Vista so was hoping to just plop my script on a WinXP machine and go. I tried running it manually now with no luck. BTW, all my equipment is Dell (D610, GX270) and I have a Lexar JumpDrive. Old versions of WinPE boot fine on these machines when using the HP format utility. I'm going to try to run some of these commands from both Vista and XP to nail down which one is failing when run from XP.

The error I get is: Disk error Press any key to restart I copied the files from the Boot directory into the System32 directory as you indicate above. I was not doing this previously. I also ran PTEDIT32 and confirmed that the boot indicator for the partition on my usb key is set to '80' (it is the only partition). Do I need to be formatting this differently? I am currently just running the normal XP format command: format %_target% /fs:fat32 /u /v:usb bootsect /nt60 %_target% xcopy C:\WinPE_x86\ISO\*.* %_target%\*.* /s /e /v /y Thanks alot for your help.

Can this be accomplished within WinXP? I am not able to manage USB key partitions within WinXP (to set as active). But, if I go to WinPE 2.0 and mark the partition as active, I am still not able to successfully boot from the USB key. If I run my entire script from within WinPE 2.0, I am able to get it to boot properly. I am still unable to from within WinXP. Maybe I am missing something? The script just formats the USB key, runs bootsect /nt60, and copies the contents of the ISO directory down.

Bootsect.exe can be used on both WinXP, Win2003, WinPE and Vista. I can run it from WinXP. It also appears to successfully write the bootsector from WinXP. But I cannot boot from it. If I run the same command from Vista, it works. bootsect.exe /nt60 %_target% <snip> Writing MBR to "G:"... Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode. G: (\\?\Volume{43bfceb3-99b5-11da-a40a-005056c00008}) Successfully updated FAT32 filesystem bootcode. Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes. </snip>

From my limited experience, it seems the bootsector needs to be written from a Vista machine. I have not yet found a solution to do this from Windows XP. Please correct me if I am wrong.