{"id":345,"date":"2008-12-20T21:53:08","date_gmt":"2008-12-21T04:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/?p=345"},"modified":"2015-09-03T08:57:09","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T15:57:09","slug":"creating-bootable-vista-windows-7-usb-flash-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/creating-bootable-vista-windows-7-usb-flash-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Bootable Vista \/ Windows 7 USB Flash Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>EDIT 2009\/12\/11: <\/strong>Microsoft Provides a tool to do this for you &#8211; Windows 7 USB\/DVD Download Tool.\u00a0See\u00a0the Microsoft Store Help on the ISO-Tool\u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/store.microsoft.com\/Help\/ISO-Tool\">http:\/\/store.microsoft.com\/Help\/ISO-Tool<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 I cobbled together the following from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vistapcguy.net\/?p=71\" target=\"_blank\">VistaPCGuy<\/a> and another source I don\u2019t remember right now.<\/p>\n<p>This will walk through the steps to create a bootable USB flash drive for the purpose of installing a Vista or Windows 7 OS.\u00a0 These instructions assume that you have a computer with Windows Vista installed on it.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Required:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>USB Flash Drive (4GB+)<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft OS Disk (Vista \/ Windows 7)<\/li>\n<li>A computer running Vista \/ Windows 7<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Step 1: Format the Drive<br \/>\n<\/strong>The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the <em>diskpart<\/em> utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Plug in your USB Flash Drive<\/li>\n<li>Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start &gt; All Programs &gt; Accessories &gt; Command Prompt and select \u201cRun as administrator\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:<br \/>\ndiskpart<br \/>\nlist disk<br \/>\nThe number of your USB drive will listed. You\u2019ll need this for the next step.\u00a0 I\u2019ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.<\/li>\n<li>Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number \u201c1\u201d with the number of your disk below.<br \/>\nselect disk 1<br \/>\nclean<br \/>\ncreate partition primary<br \/>\nselect partition 1<br \/>\nactive<br \/>\nformat fs=NTFS<br \/>\nassign<br \/>\nexit<br \/>\nWhen that is done you\u2019ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable<br \/>\n<\/strong>Next we\u2019ll use the <em>bootsect<\/em> utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable.\u00a0 In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Insert your Windows Vista \/ 7 DVD into your drive.<\/li>\n<li>Change directory to the DVD\u2019s boot directory where <em>bootsect<\/em> lives:<br \/>\nd:<br \/>\ncd d:\\boot<\/li>\n<li>Use <em>bootsect<\/em> to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista\/7 image. I\u2019m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\\ by the computer:<br \/>\nbootsect \/nt60 g:<\/li>\n<li>You can now close the command prompt window, we\u2019re done here.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive<br \/>\n<\/strong>The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive.\u00a0 After you\u2019ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB<br \/>\n<\/strong>This is where you\u2019re on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS\u2019s allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.<\/p>\n<p>I used these instructions to get my new Dell Mini 9 laptop loaded with Windows 7 (the PDC bits).\u00a0 HTH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EDIT 2009\/12\/11: Microsoft Provides a tool to do this for you &#8211; Windows 7 USB\/DVD Download Tool.\u00a0See\u00a0the Microsoft Store Help on the ISO-Tool\u00a0(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.\u00a0 I cobbled together the following from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/creating-bootable-vista-windows-7-usb-flash-drive\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Creating Bootable Vista \/ Windows 7 USB Flash Drive<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[198,199,201,202,200,184,193],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","tag-boot","tag-bootable","tag-flash-drive","tag-install","tag-usb","tag-vista","tag-windows-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3271,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/3271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}