How to Boot/Install Vista from a USB Flash drive
There’s already an article about this on the site but since its not complete I’ll be writing this tutorial on how to create a bootable Vista installation USB flash drive.
Requirements
- A 4GB flash drive (I’ll be using a much lesser one here as I don’t have one)
- A Vista Installation DVD
- The bios must support booting with usb devices and it must be enabled. And boot priority must be set so that the Flash drive boots before the Fixed HDD
- A x86 usb bootable drive can only be created within a x86 operating system
- A x64 usb bootable drive can only be created within a x64 operating system
Important:Backup the USB flash drive as this will delete everything in it.
Instructions: Create bootable Flash drive
1. Plug the USB drive in
2. Open a command prompt window with administrator privileges.
3. Type diskpart and press enter
4. Now type list disk and press enter
All the disks connected to the pc will be displayed. Make a note of the disk number of your flash drive you are about to make bootable.
5. In the command prompt window type select disk ### . (### is the number of the disk and in the above example it is 2, so it becomes select disk 2)
6. Type clean and press enter (make sure you got the correct disk in step 5 before doing this)
7. Type create partition primary and press enter
8. Type select partition 1 and press enter
9. Type active and press enter
10. To format the drive type format fs=fat32 and press enter (this will take some time)
11. Type assign and press enter. This will assign a drive letter to the usb, remember the letter as it will be needed later. In this example the assigned letter is L
12. Now type exit and press enter to exit diskpart.
Instructions: Adding Vista installation files and making it bootable
13. Insert your Vista DVD to the DVD ROM and remember it drive letterl. Mine is I
14. Open a command prompt (or if you didn’t close the one opened earlier use that) and type I:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 L: (Replace I: with your Vista installation disk drive letter and L: with the drive letter of your USB flash drive)
[Vista DVD ROM]:\BOOT\BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 [USB FLASH DRIVE]:
15. Close the command prompt window.
16. Go to your Vista installation disk select all files and copy them to the USB flash drive
Here’s a full image of the diskpart procedure:
To use it simply plug it in and boot.
That’s it! Now you have a bootable Vista installation USB flash disk…
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Comments
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Wow blacknoise awesome tutorial. Great for those netbooks with out a dvd drive.
When Windows 7 comes out I think you’ll do tha same tutorial wink wink.
Thank you very much black noise ‘am going to give it a try.
on April 29, 2009
I think this method should work for Windows 7 as well
on April 30, 2009
Hi blacknoise, I posted a similar tutorial back in 2008.
http://dotnetwizard.net/vista-stuff/tips-how-to-bootinstall-windows-7vista-from-usb-flashhard-drive/
Our method is almost identical except the fact that you use bootsect.exe /nt60 where I didn’t.
I was wondering how come you need to use bootsect in this case. Is it better?
beside, shouldn’t it be able to boot both 32bit and 64 bit regardless of whether you create this on a 32bit or 64bit system? I mean all it does is make the drive bootable by setting it active. I maybe wrong, please confirm.
on April 30, 2009
@Nam:
Its like this in XP bootable (also the same for all NT O/S) disks the bootup come in the NTLDR. In more detail the boot sector (xpboot.bin) looks in the folder i386 for setupldr.bin which looks fot txtsetup.sif for text based installation info. ( You can confirm this out if you extract the .img file from a bootable XP and use a hex editor.)
back to the question so as XP looks for NT Loader, Vista looks for the Bootmgr so unless we add the master boot code for bootmgr it won’t look for bootmgr so it won’t work. to add it we use that command (bootsect.exe /nt60). If it was an NT O/S the command would be bootsect /nt52
About the 64bit and 32bit, the bootsect.exe for 64bit and 32bit is different you can create a bootable vista 32 bit disk using a 32 bit o/s
but lets say if you try to create a bootable vista 64bit from a 32bit machine… when you type bootsect.exe /nt60 X: all you will get is a prompt… “\boot\bootsect.exe is not a valid Win32 application”
on April 30, 2009
@Nam:
almost forgot.. i added the post because there was an issue about step 6..people formatting wrong drive etc etc and most of them complaining it doesn’t work.
on April 30, 2009
@blacknoise
Thanks for the explanation. So it’s the fact that we use bootsect.exe that prohibited from making a 32bit bootable device in 64 bit environment and vice versa?
How about, if you dont use bootsect.exe at all? I didn’t and my usb boot up vista correctly.
Also, once a usb drive is made bootable, you should be able to put 64bit vista on the same drive without redoing all the work. (I would just delete all vista files, and replace with 7 and it will boot just fine).
on May 1, 2009
@Nam:
if you can confirm this then its great
the above method comes from the winpe on usb which was later changed to work for Vista
If your method works edit your post on those steps that cause problems and remove the link to the updated one
cheers
on May 1, 2009
i dont think the one in the picture can be used on this tutorial
i just noticed 
thanks though for the tutorial now i can install faster 
i love it
on May 30, 2009
I tried and everything worked fine except for the last part–the bootsect.exe part. my system kept telling me that the command is not recognized as an internal or external command.
on May 30, 2009
on May 31, 2009
hi…nice guide, i’m having some problems though, im trying to install win7 and my motherboard supports usb booting, but when i plug my pen into the computer, i get “invalid partition Table” when booting the usb. another thing, i noticed the pen was only found as usb-zip shouldn’t it be usb-fdd? and how to change that:) hope you guys can help…
on June 1, 2009
@atrix: should also inform you that im very much a newbie at this sort of thing…
on June 1, 2009
If you are havin trouble with the 32/64 bit bootsect.exe file, eg. you downloaded the 64 bit version of Windows7 but you are running Vista 32 bit, you can always copy the bootsect.exe file from your copy of vista to your usb, and follow the rest of the instructions. Tried this and it boots fine…..not sure if the XP disk will work but i’m guessin it will
on June 1, 2009
Although my pc sees and opens my usb flashdisk it doesn’t see it as a disk. My pc considers the fdd as a volume. When I write diskpart>list disk it shows:
disk 0 online 75GB 0B…
Does anyone have any idea on how to make my comp to recognize fdd as a disk?
on June 8, 2009
@Gokhan:
what do you mean it shows as a volume? your disk will be disk 0/disk 1/disk # something like that. the exact number can be found out by checking the FDD size
on June 8, 2009
@blacknoise: The problem is that my flashdisk doesnt appear when I use “list disk” command. Only one disk (disk 0) is shown as I said.
on June 9, 2009
Problem solved
I tried it on vista. thanks a lot.
on June 9, 2009
Thx…. Now I don’t need DVD DRIVE..
THX AGAIN..
on August 2, 2009
So….how would you do this with this comment made in the instructions:
“A 4GB flash drive (I’ll be using a much lesser one here as I don’t have one)”
How would you use a flash drive with less than 4GB to copy the entire contents of the DVD?
on August 30, 2009
@Rick: well simply you can’t. I have tried it and it does not work. U need a flash drive with minimum storage space of 2.33 or 2.4 GB.
on August 30, 2009
@Rick:
What’s meant there is that I’ll be using a drive with 2GB to show you how to make it bootable. Even a 128MB can be made bootable, but you will need a drive that has atleast 4GB to copy Vista.
Â
P.S: There’s a much more simple method given in this post(this also works for Vista) –
http://dotnetwizard.net/tutorials/installing-windows-7-from-a-usb-drive-newbie-guide/
on August 30, 2009
This is great for making an install drive out of your USB drive. However, I want to run windows 7 off of the usb drive, not install it. Is this possible? When I attempt to install windows 7 on the thumb drive, I get to the point where it asks where do I want to install Windows?
I get 3 choices:
1). Refresh
2). Load Driver
3). Drive Options: (advanced)
I tried all 3 options, and I am guessing that only option 2 might work if there was such a driver.
Any suggestions on where I might find this driver for my USB Flash drive?
on September 3, 2009
@I want to run windows 7 from the USB drive, not install from it. Is this possible?:
I’m not sure about that. I think Windows 7 can be installed normally on a fixed partition only. Besides windows re initializes the Usb bus when ever a usb is plugged in or out so it will crash the USB installed Windows 7 even if u manage to get it into a usb in the first place
on September 3, 2009
hi i am using a 100gb portable hard drive
when i try to format fs=fat32 it says fat32 does not support this volume
on September 6, 2009
@cj:
Fat32 supports upto 32GB when formatting using windows. So create a partition of 10GB in your portable hard drive and make that bootable.
Â
P.S: There are updated and much more easy ways to do this. Check these posts for more info….
Â
http://dotnetwizard.net/tutorials/installing-windows-7-from-a-usb-drive-newbie-guide/
Â
http://dotnetwizard.net/soft-apps/wintoflash-make-bootable-usb-drive-the-easy-way/
on September 7, 2009
@blacknoise: Thank you for the great tutorial which was very helpful until I ran into the 32bit and trying to create a 64bit bootable USB.
Is there a workaround? I lost all day trying to install Windows 7, downloaded 4 times, burned 6 DVD’s and all of them give me the same CD/DVD missing driver issue… I don’t know who is to blame but one thing I know is that I am extremely disappointed…
I hope someone out there can give me some useful information and help.
Thank you!!
on November 10, 2009
Just to confirm, there is no way to setup a 64bit bootable hard drive using Windows 7 32 bit, correct?
When my hard drive is plugged in as an external drive, the Windows ISO/USB tool doesn’t detect it as a USB drive.
From the notes above, it looks like a 32 bit version of bootsect won’t work for a 64 bit hard drive.
on January 25, 2010
@ Merlin
you are correct
on January 26, 2010
Unfortunately these instructions only work when running on Vista and newer operating systems. I just ran across an app that automates the process of creating a bootable Win7 flash drive, but does it under XP as well.
http://firesage.com/bootsage
on January 29, 2010