POINT OF INTERESTP: how to set a flash drive as drive a:\ or b:\

You'll need to check the BIOS to see if it supports booting from a USB device.

Here's some help and references for you: http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

 

OK, but you asked that you wanted to start from the A:\ ...so I guess I'm not understanding what you're asking...

If you want to start from the A:\ drive then thats booting from the A:\ drive.

If you want to just use a USB drive with the drive letter A:\ then you should be able to use Disk Management to re-assign the USB drive to A:\ as long as you don't have a floppy drive as A:\

 

In Disk Management it doesn't allow you change it to Drive A:? It doesn't automatically do it, you need to manually change it in Disk Management.

I have Vista, I quickly disabled the Floppy Drive Controller and it allowed me too to change it to A: or B: Maybe its different in XP, don't have an XP box in front of me.

Or another option is to use the SUBST command to redirect a driver letter to a folder on your hard drive, then you don't need to use the USB drive for the older program that require a Drive A:.

SUBST: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/subst.mspx?mfr=true