USB PE2 Fat32 or NTFS bootable and working!

[GTOOOOOH]

I've seen lot's of theories on how to get a USB stick to still be bootable when formatted in FAT32 or NTFS, and came up with a super simple method that works like a charm and doesn't require any 3rd party tools/apps/other/etc...

Assuming you've already got WAIK Vista installed, and a basic ISO built, all you have to do is this:

1. Burn your PE2 ISO to a CD/DVD.

2. Boot up with it.

3. Plug in your USB stick.

4. Go into DISKPART and figure out which drive it is (usually E, volume 2). This can be done by using the LIST VOLUME command.

5. Now that you're in DISKPART run the following commands (assuming your USB stick is the E drive and volume 2, otherwise substitute your drive letter for E and your volume number for 2)

Select Volume 2
Format fs=fat32 override quick
Select Volume 2
Select Disk 0
Select Partition 1
Active
Exit
BootSect /NT60 E:

You can now copy your PE files to the root of your USB drive, what I copy is the following:

Boot dir & all files

EFI dir & all files

Sources dir & all files

BootMGR file

That's it... works like a charm.

Now, if there was a way to mark the partition active within WinXP technically speaking you shouldn't have to do ANY of the above coded steps inside a VistaPE environment, but I don't know how to set an active partition in XP without potentially screwing up my machine.