Install Windows 7 From a USB Flash Drive
8:21:00 PM
Ok
so the first thing you are going to want to do is get the Windows 7 ISO.
Microsoft is no longer offering it from their website, but there are sure a lot
of other places you can get it at. Also if you have a Windows 7 DVD this guide
will work with it as well. After you have the Windows 7 ISO you need to mount
either burn it to a DVD or mount it. I had the ISO already so I just decided to
mount it using Daemon Tools. Once it is mounted make sure you remember the
drive letter.
Next
we want to prepare our flash drive. The Windows 7 ISO is about 2.5GB so you
will need a flash drive at least 4GB in size for 32 bit / 8GB in size for 64
bit. Once you have your flash drive plug it into your computer and also make
sure you remember the drive number. Now open up command prompt and type: diskpart
This
will open up a new command window. No if you are like me you have many USB
drives and card readers connected so you want to list your drives so you know
what drive your connected USB drive is. To do that type: list disk
This
will list all of your connected drives or card reader drives. Now identify your
flash drive, for us it is drive 13.
Now select the
drive by typing: select disk 13 Now
run the following commands…
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
Now what we did
there was create a primary partition on the flash drive, make it the active
partition, and format it with the FAT32 file system. Simple enough right?
Now
we have to copy the files from the Windows 7 ISO or DVD. So either put the DVD
in the drive or mount the image you have. As I said before make sure you know
the drive letters of your flash drive and of the DVD drive you are using. Now
open command prompt back up and type in this:
xcopy j:*.* /s/e/f r:
Now
in this sequence the J: drive is our mounted DVD drive and R: is our flash
drive. The drive letters will vary for you of course. One you type the command
in and press enter you will see all of the files being copied, just wait till
it is completed and you will have a bootable Windows 7 flash drive!
There
is one more thing you are going to have to do to get this to work. You are
going to need to go into the BIOS of your laptop and make the first bootable
device the USB drive
Not
only is this method convenient (carrying a flash drive is better than a DVD),
it is much, much faster than installing from a DVD. This guide not only works
with Windows 7 but will also work for Vista as well. Hope this guide has made
installing a new operating system easier, stay tuned for more Windows 7 related
articles.
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