How to Install Windows 7 / Vista From a USB Drive

Today, I will show in this post how you can make windows 7 bootable disk with the help of command prompt without any third party software.


Tools Required:

1. USB flash drive with a minimum capacity of 4 GB.

2. Windows 7 / vista set-up DVD.

 Step-1: Plug-in your USB flash drive and backup all the existing data from it. Because data will be lost during this process. 

Step-2: Open the command prompt. If you are using Windows 7/Vista then open it with administrator rights*.

* Goto Start - All Programs - Accessories - Right-click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator”.

Step 3: In the command prompt, type in the following command:

DISKPART

This will start the Microsoft DiskPart utility as shown below:

Now issue the following command:

LIST DISK

This will show you a list of  available disks on your system. Disk 0 is usually the hard disk. In my case, Disk 5 is the USB drive (this can be a different one in your case). To recognise which drive is your USB drive, you can focus on Size also. Here, as screen shot below Disk 5 is Online condition and its size is 7634, hence its my 8 GB USB Drive. Now issue the command as shown below:

SELECT DISK 5

NOTE: In the above command, 5 is the USB drive number on my system. If you have a different number on your system, then you need to replace 5 with that number.

Step-4: Now issue the following list of commands one by one as shown below:

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK

ASSIGN

EXIT

Now, Minimize the command prompt and proceed to the next step.

Step 5: Insert the Windows 7/Vista installation disc and note down the “drive letter” of your DVD drive. In my case, it is letter “H:”. Now type the following list of commands as shown below:

H: CD BOOT



CD BOOT



BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 M:(NOTE: M: is your USB drive letter)



EXIT

Step-6: Now copy the whole contents of your Windows 7/Vista installation disk into the USB flash drive.

That’s it! Your USB drive is now ready to boot and install the OS for you. Don’t forget to enable the “USB Boot” option and change the “boot priority to USB device from hard disk” in your BIOS settings.

Note : The whole procedures are same for windows Vista / 7 and Windows 8.