Can a USB flash drive boot into DOS?

[dbminter]

Inferring that the PC BIOS supports booting from USB drives, which mine does, can a USB flash drive be formatted to boot into DOS?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Of course.

 

I only have 1 bootable USB stick that I use for everything. I made it ages ago using some HP tool.

[dbminter]

I don't think I'll end up doing it. Either the easy solutions require (an admittedly small) fee to get the utilities, or appear to be to overly complex. I was thinking about having it as a way to access Q&A under DOS. But, the DOSBox way works, just requires some extra steps each time I want to run it. Trying to minimize it. I wish DOSBox had a macros type function in it for commonly used ASSIGN type commands. But, it doesn't as far as I can tell.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

I believe I used this.

 

Only takes a couple of clicks.

 

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

[dbminter]

That seems to have worked. I haven't actually tested it by booting and seeing if Q&A runs from it, if it even boots. But, I don't expect to ever need to test it any time soon.

[dbminter]

Actually, as it turns, my BIOS does NOT support booting from USB flash drives! What was in my BIOS were settings from booting from "USB Hard Drive" and "USB CD/DVD." Apparently, a USB flash drive does not qualify as a USB HD because I tried booting from it and it didn't boot.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Your new Dell? It should do.

 

Just press F12 on the bios screen and you should get a boot menu with a USB device option.

 

If you have USB 3.0 (only) ports, avoid using them as they might not be bootable due to them being off a 3rd party controller.

[dbminter]

There is an F12 boot screen option. I've never tried it before. I'll try to remember to try it someday.

 

 

As for USB 3 ports, I've wondered about that. I believe the website for this model lists USB 3 ports, but, I've no idea which ones are 2 and which are 3. If there even are any 3, or any 2 and that they're all 3. I've no idea.

[dbminter]

I'm glad you mentioned the F12 option. I'd probably have never thought about trying it. I tried it and there is a booting option for my USB flash drive when connected to the front left USB port. So, that one is probably not a USB 3 or it's not on a third party controller. So, there is the boot option in the BIOS; there just isn't an option for automatically booting from a USB flash drive.