You cannot start a computer from a USB flash drive that is formatted to use the FAT32 file system

SYMPTOMS:

Using the FAT32 file system you can format a USB flash drive. When you attempt to start the PC from this USB flash drive, the startup process stops responding, and the screen is black.

CAUSE:

These problems happen because the USB flash drive is listed as removable media. Therefore, the Windows operating system does not produce a master boot record (MBR) on the USB flash drive when you format the flash drive to use the FAT32 file system. The USB flash drive is treated as a super floppy disk. The FAT32 startup code does not support starting a PC from a super floppy drive without an MBR.

WORKAROUND:

Use the Diskpart command prompt utility to create and format the boot partition on the USB flash drive, to resolve this problem.

MORE INFORMATION:

How to differentiate between the MBR and the boot sector Currently, the Windows operating system uses signatures at offset 3 in the boot sector find out whether the sector is a boot sector. These signatures do not show in the MBR. The signatures are as follows:

• FAT16: MSDOS5.0

• FAT32: MSDOS5.0

• NTFS: NTFS

How to determine whether the boot sector is FAT32, FAT16, or NTFS
You must check two strings in the boot sector, To find out whether the USB flash drive was formatted by using the FAT32, FAT16, or NTFS file system,. If the strings have FAT32, FAT16 or NTFS, the boot sector was formatted in that particular file system format.