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…
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?
@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.
@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.
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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/
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?
@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
hi i am using a 100gb portable hard drive
when i try to format fs=fat32 it says fat32 does not support this volume
@cj:
Fat32 supports upto 32GB when formatting using windows. So create a partition of 10GB in your portable hard drive and make that bootable.
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P.S: There are updated and much more easy ways to do this. Check these posts for more info….
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http://dotnetwizard.net/tutorials/installing-windows-7-from-a-usb-drive-newbie-guide/
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http://dotnetwizard.net/soft-apps/wintoflash-make-bootable-usb-drive-the-easy-way/
[...] jag tillgång till den stabila versionen av Windows 7 redan 2009-08-14 via MSDNAA. Med guiden från Dotnetwizard.net flyttade jag iso-filen till USB-minnet och startade installationen på flickvännens Acer Aspire [...]
@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!!
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.
@ Merlin
you are correct
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