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Make a Bootable Windows 7 USB Drive

Did you ever wish to install Windows with a Flash drive but don't know how? Here are a few quick and easy tweaks that help you to Create a Bootable USB Drive for installing Windows 7. You can also use this to install Windows on a friends computer with no CD/DVD drive.

1. Plug-in your Flash Drive. First plug-in your USB stick to your USB port and copy all the content to a safe location in your hard drive.

2. Run Command Prompt as an administrator. For opening a Command prompt go to the Start menu and type cmd in the search box. Right click on it and select run as Administrator to use it with admin-rights.

3. Using the Diskpart utility find the drive number of your Flash Drive. To do so, type in the following commands in the Command Prompt:

DISKPART

• Running DISKPART will display the version of DISKPART you are running, name of your PC. Run the following command.

list disk

• Your Disk Number will be listed and note it down as you'll need this in the next step.

• Let us assume that the USB Drive is Disk 1 but if it was listed as Disk 2 use Disk 2 instead.

4. Format the drive by executing the following commands one by one. Make sure you replace Disk 1 with proper Disk number.

select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit

• When its done and if everything goes well , you should have a formatted USB drive.

5. Make the Flash Drive bootable by using the bootsect utility that is shipped with Windows 7. For doing so first insert the Windows 7 DVD and note down the drive letter of the DVD drive. Let's assume it as D: and that of the USB as G.

• Navigate to the directory where bootsect is found.

D:
cd d:\boot

• Use the bootsect to make the USB Drive Bootable (ie Updating the drive with BOOTMGR compatible code) and for preparing it to boot Windows 7. Here, replace G: with the name of your USB Drive.

BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 G:

• Close the Command Prompt windows.

6. Copy all files from the Windows 7 DVD to the formatted USB stick. The safest and the fastest way would be to use the Windows Explorer.

• Change the boot priority at the BIOS to USB.

Warnings

• Make sure you motherboard is capable of booting USB drive, if not your computer won't be able to make use of this bootable device.

Article source: wikiHow is a group effort to create a great resource: the world's largest free how to manual. wikiHow articles help people solve their everyday problems. wikiHow licenses all content under a Creative Commons License. The license allows wikiHow content to be used freely for noncommercial purposes. The Creative Commons License also allows for the creation of derivative works.

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