Creating Bootable Vista / Windows 7 USB Flash Drive

EDIT 2009/12/11: Microsoft Provides a tool to do this for you – Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. See the Microsoft Store Help on the ISO-Tool (http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool).

It surprised me to find that there are very few dead-simple guides to creating a bootable USB thumb/pen/flash drive for a Vista and/or Windows 7 installation.  I cobbled together the following from VistaPCGuy and another source I don’t remember right now.

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.

I used these instructions to get my new Dell Mini 9 laptop loaded with Windows 7 (the PDC bits).  HTH.

655 thoughts on “Creating Bootable Vista / Windows 7 USB Flash Drive”

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  5. THIS DOSE WORK ON XP! Ill tell you how. First download this http://www.ocia.net/PeToUSB.zip. Unzip it and use it to format your usb stick. the navigate to your vista dvd and go to boot folder. copy bootsect.exe from that folder to your C: drive. Open command promt and use these commands without parentheses. "cd c:" then "bootsect /nt60 x:" replacing "x" with your drive letter. when its complete copy all contents from vista dvd to your flash drive. Then set bios to from flash drive and wala, problem solved.

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  11. Copy Windows Vista’s DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

    Type in command to start copying all the content from the Windows Vista DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive.

    * xcopy d:*.* /s/e/f e:

  12. If you don't know how to kick your PC over to BIOS, if the screen changes too quickly, or if it's hidden the simplest and easiest way that works with almost every computer is to press a bunch of keys on the keyboard during startup and hold it. This will produce an error message during startup and take you straight to the BIOS. This technique hasn't failed me yet.

  15. than you very much gentle mans it rely gud we share technology im telling u this thing of making a bootable usb im going to try it 2nyt and wil be the only one knowing it.God bless u.

  17. HELP!

    I started the partition process and by accident I shut down the wrong window (the darn command prompt) — now vista doesn't find the disk at all nor it is listed in c. prompt under disks.
    What can I do to fix this????

  18. As my DVD drive is not working, how do i make my USB a bootable, formating is done correctly. Please help me as i need to install unbuntu from that.

  19. Hi everyone, just one quick tip for all those who are interested in installing any windows (XP, Vista and Windows 7) on their machines using a USB bootable disk. There is a small free downloadable utility called WintoFlash (http://wintoflash.com/home/en/) which you can use to transfer the contents of a OS disk to a USB and then you can boot from USB to continue installation. I hope that would help several people.

    Cheers

    2. hi, Grujee I tried to open the link from you but it said 404 error, can you tell me what to do, thanks !!

  20. Nice tutorial and thank you for sharing it. However I encountered an error that told me to format the disk during the process. I let the process finished and then I went back to that other little window and pressed format which took me to the normal windows formatting steps. Once I chose quick format and press enter it gave an error and told me that windows couldn't format the usb and i had to check systems log. I don't know what that means and would appreciate the help.

  21. Hey there, I followed all the above steps and I ended up losing my D-drive which is actually a partition on C. I'm pretty sure it's still there but my computer doesn't see it. HELPPPPPPP…………….Please.

  23. I'm going to attempt this from my recovery partition (HP dv9205us) running Vista Home.
    I have one question, do I need all the stuff on that partition copied to the USB? The recovery partition is almost 6GB used space?

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  25. You may want to use this option to copy the DVD to the Flash Drive:

    xcopy d:*.* /s/e/f e: where 'd' is the DVD, and 'e' is the flash drive

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  28. BootSect.Exe says

    Could not map drive partitions to the associated volume device objects:
    Access is denied.

  29. Hey everyone, I don't know if i did anything wrong, but it said everything i did was successful. When you say "bootable" do you mean that it is like a computer where it ACTUALLY boots to the login screen or desktop? Or do you mean "bootable" meaning you can install windows 7 from it? Cause it would be really nice if i could ACTUALLY boot from it and use it like a portable operating system. When I change the BIOS and stuff, then restart the computer, all it does is want me to install windows 7. Is this right? I really don't know, but if anyone can help me out here and let me know how to ACTUALLY boot up from a USB Flash Drive, then it would help me a lot! Just email me a link on how to do it or just give me instructions. Thanks!!!

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  34. My BIOS USB boot options are:
    USB-ZIP
    USB-FDD
    USB-HDD
    USB-CDROM

    Which one should I choose? Please Help

  35. wow. I have been struggling to install windows 7 upgrade on a vista laptop which has a defective DVD drive. Was having no luck with an external DVD drive. Wish I had seen your post earlier. Would have saved 5 hrs of my life! This is very helpful. Much appreciated. Thanks.

  36. Forgot to mention that you need to make sure that you remove the flash drive when the computer restarts for the first time during installation (windows 7) otherwise the computer will boot up again from the flash drive and you will need to start from scratch. Also, dont forget to change the bios boot order after you are done!

  38. Works on my USB no problems, I found to copy the bootsec I had to run CMD in Administrator mode to do it sucessfully

  39. I went through all the steps w/o any problems and created a bootable Flash disk. (I had used the same instructions successfully before, when I went from VISTA to a Beta version of Windows 7.) Now, I'm going from the BETA Windows 7 to the full retail version. But, weird, when I go to reboot, it always goes right to the hard drive. I've checked the Boot Device Priority settings in BIOS, and everything is OK there. I have also tried removing the HDD from the boot device list, but then the computer refuses to boot at all. If I hit the ESC key repeatedly during BIOS POST, I get a list of boot devices, including the flash drive. I can then select the flash drive and it takes me right into Windows 7 setup (i.e., "copying files" msg), bypassing the Windows 7 installation screen. And, I need that since I need to run the utility for creating a new partition and formatting it. Would appreciate some help please!

    1. I don't think so – but I've never tried this with a USB HDD. It /should/ work but I won't guarantee it won't break things. :)

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  43. I keep getting a "Load Device" error. As my laptop is a bit old, the only alternative boot option is via the CF card. So . . . I followed the instructions and applied it to the CF card, a USB and the hard drive (connected the hard drive to my desktop computer). Nuthin'. :o/
    Made sure to fire up the command prompt using "Run as administer" in all cases.

    Then tried installing Win 7 from my desktop. While that "worked", the system parameters for my desktop are quite different from the laptop. After attaching the hard drive back into the laptop, it started groovin', but came up with a new barrel of problems.

    Any suggestions?

  44. Anyone know if there's a way to do this with Mac OSX? I own the retail DVD, but can't setup HFS+ from windows (been playing around w/ making the laptop a Hackintosh – quite unsucessfully to date).

    1. hi karl…the easiest way to make a bootable window 7 flash drive is by using ultraiso

      i m sure you have heard about various image burning tools like poweriso or magiciso.Ultraiso is also a image burning tool but along with image burining it can be used to make a bootable winow7 .
      so just go to http://www.ezbsystems.com and download a trial version of this software and forget about all these lenghty commands :)
      i hope this reply will help you in some way

  45. Hi Can you tell me how i can create an image of windows 7 so i dont have to keep reinstalling all my custom software when i resintall windows windows.
    I have norton ghost 15 installed on my machine that i want to image but how do i get the dos ghost to boot from my USB drive? please can you e-mail the answer to simon.leavesley@gmail.com

  46. you know, Im a noob to computers…before I was so scared to mess around with computers but its people like you who are truly helpful and motivate me to unlock the inner beauties of computer software, hardware etc. I want to thank you and all the other authors like you who take the time to help noobs like me out. Btw, this tutorial is amazing…got it working :D

    Opensource software YAY! GNU YAY!

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