Hi ilko, My BIOS is phoenix award bios 5.04. I have tries booting both ways, usb stick as first device without menu and through the bios menu (not f12 but Esc). In either case, I get the boot.ini menu and after having choosen textsetup, Win complains that it cannot find hal.dll. I have no other USB device. Win is Win XP Pro SP2 and I have prepared the stick with HPUSBFW.exe. Here is the boot.ini file you ask for. [boot Loader] Timeout=10 Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS [Operating Systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="GUI Mode Setup Windows XP" /FASTDETECT C:\SETUPLDR.bs="TEXT Mode Setup Windows XP" It seems that I cannot attach any other file than text files that way, the system hangs. Edit : I tried uploading with another browser, I have a warning "upload failed, you are not permitted to upload this type of file (BOOT.INI BackupBS.ori SETUPLDR.bs). Sorry.