sorry, to be clear, both options were OFF (startup disk and quick format) sorry again, i don't understand, so you say i have to do nothing (step 1 was only downloading the util), copy bootpart to usb stick, format the stick (which was step 2, so isn't diskpart and anything else gone now?), now there should be dos on it (how? i didn't copy the files or format it the right way) other things i tried meanwhile are my own steps with the exception of formatting to ntfs and adding boot.ini file (although i don't know i added the lines right in boot.ini), all with no success... my own feeling says i just haven't got the combination right, there's probably a simple thing i'm missing while looking the situation over...