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BootMyISO In the following tutorial, we will show you How to Boot an ISO from a USB Flash Drive.  Syslinux is used to install a MBR to your Flash Drive and make the devices partition active (bootable), GRUB is started via a syslinux.cfg file. Grub then becomes the boot loader for it’s CD Emulator. We confirmed this process works by Booting the Memtest86+ ISO, Partition Magic ISO, and we even booted the Ubuntu 9.10 ISO from USB (See MultiBoot USB ISO). I would imagine many Linux ISO would boot and run from the USB device.

How to Boot an ISO from a USB Flash Drive

Update: BootMyISO now utilizes a graphical Installer!

1. Download and run BootMyISO.exe, and follow the onscreen instructions
2. Restart your PC booting from the USB device and select Memtest86+ from the Menu

If all went well, you should be running the Memtest86+ ISO directly from your USB device.

Boot a Parted Magic ISO from your USB Flash Drive

Using a text editor like notepad++ you can open and edit the menu.lst file found on the root of your USB device. For Example;

1. Uncomment (remove the # from the Parted Magic Section)
   

   # title Parted Magic 4.5 ISO Boot
   # find –set-root /pmagic-4.5.iso
   # map /pmagic-4.5.iso (hd32)
   # map –hook
   # root (hd32)
   # chainloader (hd32)

2. Once you have removed the comments,  save the menu.lst file
3. Download the “pmagic-4.5.iso.zip” and unzip the file
4. copy pmagic-4.5.iso to your Flash Drive
5. Restart your PC again and you should now have the menu option Parted Magic ISO Boot

Boot another ISO from your USB Flash Drive

Notice that there is a third section in menu.lst that can be used to test Boot other ISO’s from USB.

1. Simply copy the ISO you want to Boot to your USB device
2. Uncomment (remove the # from the Test ISO section)
   

   # title Test ISO
   # find –set-root /testname.iso
   # map /testname.iso (hd32)
   # map –hook
   # root (hd32)
   # chainloader (hd32)

3. Change testname.iso to the name of the ISO you copied to the USB device
4. Restart your PC and choose the Test ISO boot option to see if your ISO boots from USB.

Note: If you get a Boot error stating:

Error 60: File for drive emulation must be in one contiguous disk area

This means your ISO is fragmented. You can use either of the following tools to defragment your ISO:

contig -  A command line tool that can defragment ISO files.

wincontig – A GUI tool that can be used to defragment ISO files.

[Credit to: PenDriveLinux.com]