For Windows PE 1.0, the minimalist Windows based on Windows 2003/XP, you needed an SA (Software Assurance), OEM, or ISV license. When Windows Vista was released everyone had access to Windows PE 2.0. This also applies to the Windows 7-based edition, Windows PE 3.0. Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment) was originally designed to deploy Windows. Temporarily set the USB FDD (USB Flash Disk Drive) to be listed right before the hard drive (or partition) that you will be installing Vista on in the hard drive Boot Priority order list in the BIOS. After you are finished installing Vista from the USB key, make the Vista hard drive (or partition) listed first in the hard drive Boot Priority Click the small CD icon to the right of Create a bootable disk using: and load the Windows XP ISO file. Tap the Start button after perusing the File Manager for an ISO image, and the tool will automatically create a bootable Windows XP USB in seconds. Way 4: Using WinToFlash. The next method to create a bootable Windows XP drive is using Boot into the Windows Recovery Console using a bootable XP installation CD. If you have no bootable XP media (or are not sure what you have) create a bootable XP Recovery Console CD and be sure (no XP media required). This is not the same as any recovery disks that might have come with a store bought system. You can make a bootable Recovery Step 6: Continue Windows XP Setup from Hard disk. Reboot your system. Unplug USB drive during post stage. Change your BIOS settings back to boot from hard disk again as needed. You can now continue to finish setting up Windows XP. Note: The above guide works with Windows XP only. ddrescue. Currently I would (1) make a bootable linux USB and boot from it, (2) to recognize input (old) and output (new) units, use gparted or sudo fdisk -l. (3) install gsmartcontrol and make the long analysis of the old hard disk ( sudo gsmartcontrol opens the GUI). (4) Then, install ddrescue. 1. Yes, it is possible with winxp. I've tested and run winxp on usb for many times and it worked well. The concept is simple, all you need is a vhd disk image which contains a winxp (full or mini is up to you) installed with winvblock drivers. You can you oracle virtualbox to create the vhd file. After all, you use grub4dos to boot the vhd image. If the current disk is working in FDD or ZIP mode, this function can convert it to HDD mode. Detailed steps are in the following: Step 1. Select the USB disk to be created bootable disk and click "Disk" > "Convert Boot Mode" > "Convert To HDD Mode". Step 2. Click Yes button to continue if files on the disk have been well backed up. Then UBCD4Win is completely configurable, but you will need an external program to convert the ISO CD image to bootable USB disc format; Hiren's Boot CD is available as a bootable USB, but I have not investigated if it can be configured for your purposes: see Hiren from USB Flash . Is HP USB Recovery Flash Disk Utility for Windows 10? Yes. It can run on a PC with Windows 11 or Windows 10. Previous versions of the operating system shouldn't be a problem with Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista having been tested. Windows XP is supported. It comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads. 4FbWwM.