This will walk through the steps to create a bootable USB flash drive for the purpose of installing a Vista or Windows 7 OS. These instructions assume that you have a computer with Windows Vista installed on it.
Required:
* USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
* Microsoft OS Disk (Vista / Windows 7)
* A computer running Vista / Windows 7
Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]
1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select "Run as administrator"
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
diskpart
list disk
The number of your USB drive will listed. You'll need this for the next step. I'll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number "1" with the number of your disk below.
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit
When that is done you'll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.
Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable
Next we'll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable. In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:
1. Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD's boot directory where bootsect lives:
d:
cd d:\boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I'm assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
bootsect /nt60 g:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we're done here.
Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive. After you've copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.
Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you're on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS's allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.
Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
In command prompt, first type DISKPART and hit Enter, then type LIST DISK and hit Enter, then take the number it shows you there for your USB If you have several USBs in the system, you can only make the correlation by the size. If necessary, you may have to unplug other drives that have the same size. Onc you have the number, you use this for the SELECT DISK command.
Fat32 also works.
For the second step (loading the ISO on the USB) i have used a slightly different approach. I unzipped the ISO file with WinRar and just moved the files over to the USB. That worked perfectly. And then there is always this command: xcopy x:*.* /s/e/f y:
If you cant get XPs diskpart to find your disk, just format it in FAT32, then use CONVERT in command prompt to convert it to ntfs. After the disk has been converted continue to step 3.
run the 64bit in a virtual partition if 32 bit already there. Install VirtualBox (I found this to be the best performing) on your Vista. You can install W7 directly from the downloaded ISO file - takes 35 minutes (no need for a DVD or USB). Performance is very good (I allocated 1.4GB of my 3GBRAM to the virtual partition) and you can switch between W7 and Vista with 1 click. You just have to give Superfetch a few minutes to reorder it's files for Vista after you started VirtualBox. That's why I keep the virtual partition running all day because once the system settles down, performance is good on both sides (host and guest)
Required:
* USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
* Microsoft OS Disk (Vista / Windows 7)
* A computer running Vista / Windows 7
Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]
1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select "Run as administrator"
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
diskpart
list disk
The number of your USB drive will listed. You'll need this for the next step. I'll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number "1" with the number of your disk below.
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit
When that is done you'll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.
Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable
Next we'll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable. In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:
1. Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD's boot directory where bootsect lives:
d:
cd d:\boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I'm assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
bootsect /nt60 g:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we're done here.
Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive. After you've copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.
Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you're on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS's allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.
Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
In command prompt, first type DISKPART and hit Enter, then type LIST DISK and hit Enter, then take the number it shows you there for your USB If you have several USBs in the system, you can only make the correlation by the size. If necessary, you may have to unplug other drives that have the same size. Onc you have the number, you use this for the SELECT DISK command.
Fat32 also works.
For the second step (loading the ISO on the USB) i have used a slightly different approach. I unzipped the ISO file with WinRar and just moved the files over to the USB. That worked perfectly. And then there is always this command: xcopy x:*.* /s/e/f y:
If you cant get XPs diskpart to find your disk, just format it in FAT32, then use CONVERT in command prompt to convert it to ntfs. After the disk has been converted continue to step 3.
run the 64bit in a virtual partition if 32 bit already there. Install VirtualBox (I found this to be the best performing) on your Vista. You can install W7 directly from the downloaded ISO file - takes 35 minutes (no need for a DVD or USB). Performance is very good (I allocated 1.4GB of my 3GBRAM to the virtual partition) and you can switch between W7 and Vista with 1 click. You just have to give Superfetch a few minutes to reorder it's files for Vista after you started VirtualBox. That's why I keep the virtual partition running all day because once the system settles down, performance is good on both sides (host and guest)
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