GG - excuse the confusion. I see your bootdisk link covers up to XP. I understood that Vista did not 'use' DOS? Which DOS img do I need for a Vista boot CD?.
Keef - I had looked at the USB stick solution - there seem to be more options for making them bootable than for USB drives. I'm stuck with only 2GB on a stick at the moment, and Vista is around 3.2GB. I have tried LInux (Ubunbtu) but it does not boot properly - strange graphics screen then a freeze.