How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive

July 20, 2009

in Software

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive

The Windows 7 beta has been released for quite a while now. If you want to follow the crowd and test it in your system, but do not want to burn into a DVD, here is how you can create a bootable USB drive to install Windows 7 on your system.

Format USB flash drive to NTFS format

(For Win XP only. Vista users can directly format the USB drive to NTFS format) In your Windows, go to Control panel -> system -> hardware -> Device manager.

Under the disk drives section, right click on the USB storage drive and select Properties.

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Go to the Policies tab, select optimize for performance. Click OK.

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Open your Windows Explorer, you should see the USB storage drive in the inventory. Right click and select Format. Select NTFS from the drop down bar. Click Start.

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

For Windows XP,

Download MBRWizard. Extract the zipped files to your desktop.

Open a command prompt (Start –> Program –> Accessories –> Command Prompt).

cd Desktop/MBRWiz2.0/
MBRWiz /list

Record the USB flash drive disk number

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Make the USB drive active.

mbrwiz /disk=X /active=X (X is Disk Number of your USB Drive)

For Windows Vista,

On the Start menu, navigate to the command prompt entry. Right-click and select Run as administrator.

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Type

diskpart
list disk

Record the disk number of your USB flash drive.

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Select the USB disk.

select disk X (X is the drive number of the USB flash drive)

List the current partition. Record the partition number.

list partition

Select the current partition and make it active.

select partition Y (Y is the partition number of the USB flash drive)
active

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Creating bootable USB flash drive

Download Windows 7 iso (32-bit) file to your desktop.

Download and install WinRAR.

Right-click on the Windows 7 iso file and select Extract files. Extract the files to a folder (you can name the folder any name you want, but for illustration purpose, I name it win-7) in your desktop.

In your command prompt, cd to the windows 7 folder.

cd Desktop/win-7 (Change the destination to the folder that you have extracted)
cd boot
bootsect /nt60 X: (X is the drive latter of your USB drive )

How to boot and install Windows 7 from USB flash drive image

Now, copy all the files from the Windows 7 folder to the USB flash drive.

Reboot the computer. Remember to change the first boot device to your USB drive in the BIOS.

You should be able to install Windows 7 from your USB flash drive now.

Original Post: MakeTechEasier

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

canadian pharmacy affiliatenych October 21, 2009 at 7:23 am

Great. Now i can say thank you

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