I have created a new thread on this so as not to hijack some discussion (http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/Norton-Recovery-Tool-How-to-correctly-write-iso-to-usb-Linux/m-p/214507#M105929)
that has been going on elsewhere and which was veering away from the OP's original question.
I have successfully created a USB key containing the downloaded NRD iso file following the general instructions found here and all due credit to Pieter Viljoen (PieterV).
I make the following observations which may help others doing likewise.
1. It is not possible to use Diskpart in XP to prepare the USB device. I used Diskpart under Vista.
2. Any contents on the USB will be removed when you perform "Clean"
3. When the disk has had "assign" applied, any contents then stored on the disk will be wiped when you apply the robocopy instruction.
4. I use Asus motherboard P5K-E and there is no hardware specific key required to boot from the USB key, however three changes are required in the bios. First, the Boot Device Priority must be set to removable device, which means if you already have a cd/dvd drive, that a third boot device will need to be configured for removable device, and then the order changed so that the third boot device is the first priority. Second, there is a setting in the Boot Menu for Hard Disk Drives, and now the usb drive (which shows as USB - Sandisk Cruzer Micro in bios) must be the first drive ahead of any ide/sata drives. Thirdly,under USB configuration menu, there are settings for USB Mass Storage Device Configuration and I changed the setting to HDD but AUTO should work too.
So here are my initial questions:
A. The version of NRD was 1.4.3.38 is that the latest?
B. The current date of data files were 08/29/08 is that correct?
C. Why has the NRD tool for download as ISO not been updated since 2008?
D. When booting from the USB, NRD reports "not able to retrieve the most recent protection update from the internet". Any idea why this would fail?
E. If the NRD is designed to download updates to itself (as should have happened in D above, then why is there a need to manually update NRD before creating the USB key? I must be missing something I feel.