Make USB Drive Non-Bootable

Question

Some time ago I used a 4GB USB drive to install Linux on, but I have a new USB drive and decided to use the old one for Windows Vista Readyboost. I used UNetbootin to install Linux and it made the USB drive bootable. Even though I have already formatted it (FAT32) the computer still gives this error if the USB drive is plugged in before Windows begins booting:

Remove disks or other media.
Press any key to restart

Solution

Grab an Ubuntu LiveCD and go into System->Administration->Partition Editor (Or GParted, depending). Go into the top-right drop box and find your drive (easiest way is using the drive size) and look at its partition, right click on it and choose Manage Flags (or as close to it as possible) and uncheck the boot flag. Click Apply. Reboot.

Comments

[Prerak Diwan]

Are you sure that you formatted it? If you've already formatted the drive, then all data should be erased (including boot files) unless you partitioned the drive and formatted the other partition, which being a 4GB flash drive i doubt.

[ivan_pozdeev]

Possible duplicate of MBR: How does BIOS decide if a drive is bootable or not?

[Prerak Diwan]

You can do that in windows as well, with disk manager.

[digitxp]

True, forgot about that. I wonder if Microsoft hid it so much for a reason though...

[Admin]

Couldn't find it in Windows Disk Manager, but GParted solved my problem! :D