How to Create a Bootable USB
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 (click
enter)
list disk (click enter)The number of your USB drives will list. 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 (click
enter)
clean (click enter)create partition primary (click enter)
select partition 1 (click enter)
active (click enter)
format fs=NTFS (click enter)
assign (click enter)
exit (click enter)
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 labelled 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.
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