Before installing Windows or any other program into the USB flash drive, you should run an initial boot-up test to verify if the flash drive works. For that, you need to restart your PC and select USB flash drive as the "First Boot Device" in the BIOS. The BIOS will either show the name of the plugged-in USB flash drive or something generic such as "USB-HDD" (AMI).

For this test, deactivate "Quick Boot" and "Show Full Screen Logo" options
in order to monitor any BIOS reported activities. Also, the "USB Legacy Support" and "USB 2.0 Controller" options should be activated if available. Save and exit from the BIOS to restart the Pc. If the BIOS starts up without any problems, it should run till it reports a "HAL notfound" error. Do not panic as this file is yet to be copied to the USB flash drive.

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If you encounter any problems, look for a particular option in the BIOS that extends the response time of the USB drive, for example, the "USB Mass Storage Reset Delay" option found in the AMI-BIOS. Choose the highest value and gradually decrease the value until the problem pops up again. This way, you will know the optimum time supported by your USB flash drive to respond to the BIOS boot command.

If you still encounter problems, check your BIOS motherboard manual or visit the BIOS related web sites . Note that on slower USB flash drives, this latency can go up to about 30 seconds. After this, restart the PC and access Windows using normal boot-up by selecting your hard disk as "First Boot Device" from the BIOS.