I have one pen drive 8gb I think-- an old one.

Has making one bootable ever gotten any easier? Or is there one brand more reliable than another? I tried some piece of software to make a bootable thumb drive that gave me fits. And there was one routine I had printed instructions for-- long ago misplaced. But I only give up on those things when problems develop.

I'm using Win7 now. But it's repair routine is nowhere as good as the old XP
repair disk to repair/rewrite and to refresh MBR when needed (which is usually the problem at a no boot.)

The tools in Hirens are old, DOS -based and flaky. Is there
any refresh MBR routine for Win7? I've seen the Fixmbr command and Fixboot command accessed through the Win7 repair disk.