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”

  1. Pingback: My Bookmarks For December 6th – December 17th | Cristiano on Tech/Life

  2. I can get through step 1 and step 2. Step 3 is where I am having problems. If I try to copy all the files to the USB from the DVD there are files I need to skip and then only about 200 MB gets copied. Half of the time windows explorer crashes while I'm doing it. If I use the xcopy method via the command prompt I also get errors. Could you describe the process of copying the files in more detail? Trying to to copy files from a Windows 7 upgrade ISO. Was able to burn a DVD but I get "a required cd/dvd drive device driver is missing" error, so I am trying to install without the dvd drive.

  3. Also with this method.. after the reboot of the files being loaded YOU MUST TAKE THE FLASH DRIVE OUT OR IT WILL BEGIN AGAIN FROM THE BEGINING FOR THE INSTALL!! Found out the hard way.

  4. Pingback: I'm cofused. Windows, Upgrade and Partitions.

  5. Worked like a charm. I only needed the bootable Win7 USB for the ability to shrink a volume with diskpart. Apparently you can't shrink with any version of diskpart below Vista and the diskpart exe does not work on Win2003 or XP. Thanks!

  7. Pingback: Windows 7 Bootable USB problem - Page 2 - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net
  10. Pingback: win 7 iso to usb stick

  12. Thanx for this helped alot i installed windows 7 on advent notebook 1 problem i came across was at first fomat reboot it went back to begining ie fresh format of windows 7 resolved by during first reboot change boot options back to hdd first usb second many thanks for your help

  13. Thanks for your site Kevin. My question is slightly off topic. I want to clone my Windows 7 Enterprise VLK installation with ImageX. I need to make my USB flash drive bootable to boot into WinPE. I created my winpe.iso. I followed your steps successfully down to the bootsect command. I copied my winpe.iso file to the flash drive. When I reboot to the flash drive, I get the error BOOTMGR is missing. What am I doing wrong?

    1. Good question. It's hard to say, but it sounds like the WinPE image didn't have the expected boot manager (bootmgr). This isn't something I've tried, so let me know if you figure out what was missing.

      1. Hi Kevin- Now that the holiday is past, I got back to working on this. Turns out that I was making the process more difficult than it needed to be. The creation of the WinPE adds in all of the files necessary to make it bootable. All I had to do was burn to disk. Doh! Thanks again for your work!

  14. Alright – I admit… I could be retarded; However, that prefaced, is this to simply INSTALL Win7 or Vista via the USB drive? If so, cool enough.. but if its to actually RUN Win7 from the USB drive, I must be missing a step.. Can you just confirm what my expectations should be of the two mentioned? Thanks..

  16. Very nice tute. Thanks for this. I have a one doubt:
    What if i dont put any os files after following all the steps and just try to boot through the usb?
    Gave me the "missing bootmgr" message although i think bootsect step is exclusively for setting up bootmgr itself.

  17. I got a problem here,thanks for helping me.

    I don't have a Window 7 Professional disc,but jz have the licensed product key.
    so I had download the Window 7 Professional,extracted it into the files and put on dekstop.

    so wat should I do for the step 2?

  18. Pingback: About to install Windows 7 on and SSD, any options during install, tips?
  19. Pingback: Windows 7 Upgrade - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net
  20. Pingback: Windows 7 install guide + App lineup (Vostro 1700) — Nomad’s Land
  24. Pingback: Questions about Bootsect.exe for bootable USB - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

  26. For Your Information!!!
    As someone else said in this thread…
    If you get an error saying (when doing the Bootsect.exe command):
    "Could not map drive partitions to the associated volume device objects. Access Denied" then try to continue to the next step. It worked for me too :)

  28. my flashdrive doesn't show up when i typed in the command list disk. it only show my harddrive. any suggestions? thank

  29. This trick is remarkable. I was getting a repeated "bootmgr not found" message preventing me from loading Windows 7, and the repair option on the Windows installation DVD failed to fix it because it couldn't access the hard drive – but by creating a bootable USB stick and running repair again, I fixed the problem in seconds. Many thanks!

  31. No luck,
    I followed your instructions and having the error "Invalid partition table" at startup.

  32. Hey there!! Your instructions helped a lot!! However, I need to write a bootable windows 7 dvd and I don't know how to.

    I have a copy of windows 7 and guessing from the flashdrive method, my guess is to load the bootsect utility on magic iso to make it bootable. But, obviously its just a guess from a rookie. Could you please help out!!!

  33. it doesn,t work for me…
    on the last part..

    D: boot>bootsect /nt60 g:
    Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode.

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

    what will i do?help!

    1. I has same problem – find your CMD icon and right click on it. Click on RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR and the problem should go away.

  34. So I am trying to do this off of XP to put Windows 7 on my flash drive. It is a 4 GB Kingston. However when I type in the 'list disk' command, it is only showing my main hard drive and it won't show my USB stick. How do I change this?

  35. ryan you can try to use formatting tool like partition magic, i think it should have something like create new boot partition or something like that. Let me know if it helps

  42. tutorial but sadly it only works if your using Vista to do all this, I tried it on my desktop that has Xp 64-bit and it wouldn't show my USB as a disk when I typed 'list disk', so I took it to my laptop which has Ultimate and it worked like a charm

  43. Great tutorial, worked perfectly for me. One question: I need to boot from my flash drive using the LEAST amount of system files possible, because I have a chunk of data to copy onto the flash drive from a mucked up hard drive. Can you please list only the ESSENTIAL files to copy to the flash drive in order to get it booted? THANKS!

  44. Now that you have got the boot files on your memorystick, could you delete them from your computer so that it would only boot when the memorystick is inserted? If so what files would i be looking for in windows 7?

  45. mate im getting an error.. :( could not map drive partitions to the assosiacted volume device objects: access denied :(( what the hell is it? lmao!

    please help guys!!!!!

  46. im using windows 7 on my main laptop :( and trying to make vista boot usb for my linux laptop, i wanna get rid of linux, that laptop doesnt have a cd rom :(

  47. Excellent write up.

    I tried installing Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, it finished copying files and installing them, then Setup had to restart. After re-starting, the computer booted the USB from the beginning again. IE. It didn't leave off where it was before restarting.

    Anyone know how to get around this? I need to continue the setup process, not have the USB boot from scratch again.

    Cheers.

    1. I realized shortly after I wrote this that the files should already be on the HDD. Thanks for the reply.

  49. It works another way – i copied all the WIN7 data on a stick and followed your procedure
    by using the win 7 files ON the stick

    ++++++You wrote
    # Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.

    +++++I did
    you dont have to do that – just go to your stick with all win 7 files on it

    +++++You wrote
    # Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
    d:

    +++++ I did
    Change directory to the stick with win 7 files on it

    cd x:boot (x is your stick)

    +++++You wrote
    # 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:

    +++++I did
    use bootsec on the stick to set the same stick bootable
    I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk X: by the computer:
    bootsect /nt60 x:

    So you are using the programm "bootsect" from your stick to make the very same stick bootable

    Worked like a charm :-)
    greetings

    wolf

  50. Pingback: Install another OS by usb? - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

Comments are closed.