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Installing Windows 7 from USB Flash drive

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:34 pm
by gabrielh
Please note: during this procedure you'll lose any data on your USB stick. Please be extra careful during formatting, while choosing wrong drive will erase him completely. This guide provided as-is, at your own risk.

Things you need to have

1. PC running Win XP/Vista/7
2. DVD with Windows 7 32 bit Installation
3. 8GB or larger USB stick

Preparing USB stick
1. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
2. Run diskpart utility by typing “ diskpart” into command prompt window and pressing “Enter”
3. Locate your USB stick disk number by executing “list disk”. We will assume your USB disk is 1.
4. Run following commands
4a: select disk 1
4b: clean
4c: create partition primary
4d: select partition 1
4e: active
4f: format fs=NTFS
4g: assign
4h: exit

Now we have prepared USB stick. Lets make him bootable

1. Insert your DVD windows 7 32 bit Installation into DVD drive. Let's assume it's D
2. Go to D:\boot (cd d:\boot)
3. If your USB drive letter is “e” please run “ bootsect /nt60 e: ”
4. Copy DVD Windows 7 media content to USB root folder (etc. don't put it into any folder)

You are now ready to install Windows 7 from USB stick