Creating USB bootable setup of Windows Vista and 7

Hi Friends,

Now a days DVDs and CDs are replaced by USB Pen drive. Today's smart and ultra notebooks are coming without any DVD or CD ROM. And we even don't use DVD and CD any more. But when we need to re-install or install a new Operating System (OS) in our computer then we need this DVD or CD Rom.

But there is a very good alternative for it. We can boot from USB Pen drive and install a new OS from there (USB boot should be supported by Mother Board, only very old mother board does not have this feature).

Most of us today using Windows OS (XP, Vista, 7 or 8). In this blog I am explaining only for Vista and after words OS trick to make a Bootable installation USB Pen Drive. For other OS I will explain on different blog.

Microsoft had made Vista and onward OS USB friendly, so it is quite easier to make Bootable installation USB pen drive for them.

You have two options for it :

1) Command based :

This work only on Vista and onward OS, not on XP.

Open CMD with administrator privilege. You can do it by right click on cmd and then select Run as Administrator.

Give following commands one by one :

• diskpart

• list disk

• select disk x (Here x should be your pen drive disk number that you seen is list disk)

• clean

• create partition primary

• active

• format fs=ntfs quick

• assign

• exit

Now you have to copy all files from ISO image of setup to Pen drive. You can do this in 2 ways :

• Use following command  

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (Here d: is your setup path* and e: is your Pen Drive path)

• Or just copy all files from ISO image (or setup) and Paste it to Pen Drive.

2) MS Tool

This work only on XP Sp2 and onward OS.

You can also use a MS Tool named "Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool" for creating Windows 7 setup USB pen drive. 

You can download it from here, and you need a ISO image* of Windows 7 for it.


*For mounting an ISO image you can use any free Virtual Dvd Rom. One of them you can download from here.