My Intel Mac OS X computer is corrupt and I feel, at this point, I need to perform a fresh install of the OS. It consistently and automatically logs out, right after I log in. I tried logging in as the root. I tried safe boot and it wouldn't load.

Anyway, the point is I want put the Mac OS X installer on a USB thumb drive and have it boot up on the Intel Mac OS X computer. Unfortunately, the computer is inaccessible, as I mentioned above.

So, I have a Windows XP machine that I'm using and attempting to create a bootable USB thumb drive that's compatible with Mac OS X.

I have tried transmac, macdrive, and paradox for windows -- all of which proved unable to format the usb stick in HFS+. How do I know this? Well, even though the Transmac reports that's been formatted to HFS+, Computer Management in Windows says otherwise:

I even put the installer on the usb drive, after transmac reportedly formatted it properly, and the mac os x computer didn't even recognize that a USB thumb drive was inserted, via pressing the option key at boot-up time.

I'm not sure what the problem is and how to actually format the drive.

Can anybody offer any help? I would appreciate it. Thank you.