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Creating Bootable Media - Won't Boot

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Tried creating bootable media following directions in https://kb.acronis.com/content/11764, Windows PE environment. Everything works fine up until copying everything from the mounted ISO to a flash drive, but it won't boot. What's the last step that makes the flash drive bootable like when you burn a bootable ISO to a DVD? Thanks!

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Have you made the flash drive's partition active?

For some reason Disk Director doesn't allow that option for this disk. Is there something else I need to do make the volume activatable?

Oops, it is already active, that's why the menu doesn't show that option. So yes, it is active. Any other reason why it wouldn't boot after creating the WinPE environment with Disk Director? Thanks!

Steven:

How did you originally format the flash drive? Was it from a Windows 7 PC? Which filesystem are you using; NTFS or FAT32?

Here is how I would prepare the flash drive to boot to a WinPE environment. Plug the flash drive into a Windows 7 machine and open an administrative command prompt. Use Diskpart to clean the drive, then create a single primary partition the size of the drive, format it as NTFS, then make the partition active. Follow the steps outlined in this article, which was written for Vista but works the same on Windows 7 and Windows 8: http://themudcrab.com/acronis_diskpart.php Make one change - after cleaning the drive, change the format command to NTFS instead of FAT32 by changing this line:

format fs=fat32 quick

to this line:

format fs=ntfs quick

When done, exit diskpart, use "safely remove" to unplug the flash drive, then reinsert it. Use Windows Explorer to give the drive a name, then copy the contents of your mounted ISO back to the flash drive.

WinPE uses bootmgr, and expects to have the boot process configured Windows 7 style to boot to "bootmgr". The preceding steps set up the flash drive to find the file "bootmgr" on the drive and boot from there.

If you still have problems, try booting the drive on another computer. USB flash drive boot is not universally supported on all PC BIOS implementations. It should be on most motherboards manufactured in the last few years, however.

I got it. I was creating the ISO directly on the flash drive, instead of creating it elsewhere, mounting it and then copying the files over.