Alex, see my replies below. Thank you for the help so far, JohnO.
Did you also make the backup in device mode? Check, if there is any window open, that may show contents of the flash drive, and close it. Try to restore you backup.
JohnO: I cannot be sure I made the backup in device mode. The tools originally comes up in volume mode and need to run as admin to change the option. I thought I did this but I cannot be sure now; is there any way to tell from the *.img? Also I tried to restore the blank bootsector image I downloaded and it didn't work wither. There were no other windows open when I attempted the restores.
If it still doesn't work, please check the following: go to the control panel, open the Administrative tools and open the storage control. Does you flash drice appear there? I don't have the English names, but it should list all hard and flash drives there. Do you see your fash drive appearing there?
JohnO: Yes, the flash drive does appear as Disk 1 (Disk 0 is the HD). It seems to have two partitions; one has file system listed as RAW and the other allocated has a blank file system.
You can also try to reformat it by right-clicking it and then try to restore your image or using the "HP USB Store Format Tool" and then try to restore it.
JohnO: All attempts to reformat it have failed. It tells me the system cannot find the file specified... I also could not assign any drive letters. The HP Tool did not work either.
If it still doesn't work, please try it on another computer or use the following tool to make a screenshots of you devices and mail it to me.
JohnO: I haven't tried any other computers yet but will do this next. I ran the utility below and have a report I can send me; please let me know the email you prefer.
Link: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
You could also try this:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=7747
JohnO: I tried the solutions in the boxee thread above and none work; mainly I believe because I am unable to assign a drive letter to the volume.
However, I would be interested in more details about this, as somehow Windows occasionally seems to have problems accessing these flash drives. Could you get me a link to this image or a tutorial how to create one, because I want to try to recreate the problem myself. Thanks in advance.
JohnO: The original procedure I followed is here: http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/wiki/atvWinPatchstickGuide The ATV patched fine so it seems the procedure for creating the patchstick worked just not the restore.
Thank you.