Windows 7, I’m sure you have heard of it by now. Already Microsoft has a new operating system, hopefully this one won’t be a disaster like Vista was. If you installed Vista or even later versions of XP from a DVD you know that it was very time consuming. Why not speed up the process by using a flash drive to install Windows 7. Windows 7 is currently in beta and Microsoft is offering it free to anyone to try out until August. In this article we will show you how to take the Windows 7 ISO and put it on a USB flash drive for fast and easy installation.
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. I am using an 8GB flash drive I got from BFG during CES. 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
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. This was very easy to do on my Dell XPS M1210. After that you are good to go, so just plug in your flash drive and install Windows 7.
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.
Great guide however I use UltraISO since it only takes a couple mouse clicks.
Great guide.
Very informative guide, now i can go buy windows 7 and install it on my netbook!! thank you =D
Very informative guide, now i can go buy windows 7 and install it on my netbook!! thank you =D
I'll have to give this a try.
I'll have to give this a try.
I'll have to give this a try.
thanx very much it's awsome
thanx very much it's awsome
Users should using UltraISO instead since it only takes a couple mouse clicks.
Users should using UltraISO instead since it only takes a couple mouse clicks.
True it's easier, but cmd is much cooler =D.
True it's easier, but cmd is much cooler =D.
So helpful – thanks!
Just wasted my two DVDs while trying to burn them, if it works, it would be awesome, lemme give it a try 🙂
Actully it didnt help, list disk doesnt show any of my usb disks, only my real HDD… and only hdd, not partitions…
Actully it didnt help, list disk doesnt show any of my usb disks, only my real HDD… and only hdd, not partitions…
it needs to be done with vista/seven. on xp using the list disk command i couldn't see the usb too, but when i tried on seven it worked.
Sweet. I was looking around for a guide to do this again. Did it on my computer with a 32 bit OS. And needed to do the same for my Girlfriends 64 System. So this came in handy. Thanks.
sweet got it installed last night and i'm loving windows 7 . Works fabulous!!
Unfortunately these instructions only work when running on Vista and newer operating systems. I just ran across an app that automates the process of creating a bootable Win7 flash drive, but does it under XP as well.
http://firesage.com/bootsage
Bootsage worked perfectly. Thanks for the heads up!
thank you very nice
Very nice guide, thank you for your assistance I have used this a few times now! 🙂
Can you have Ubuntu 9.19 and windows 7 on flash stick?
This guide is amazing thank you thats all I can say.
Hey, I'm using my friends flash, will he be able to use it again?
if you dont delet or format flash drive . you can use as far as you need
why my 8gb cant appear if i type “listdisk” but i can see it on my computer and disk management?
any one can help me?
If you're using WinXP and below, then your diskpart will not see it. You will have to do that on Windows Vista and above. Had the same issue, but did some research and then did mine on my work laptop with Vista on it. Try it out.
Hey it worked fine…!
Thanks
fantastic. really much much better.
Damn Iranians & Iran…
While the manual process has worked fine, Bootsage is nice because it bypasses the manual steps and automates the whole process. Good find!
As a reminder, this is an add-on to download the form of a virtual machine to run directly under windows seven and totally transparent, software provided the basis for Windows XP Read more from the Windows XP Mode RC for Windows 7 Setup Guide at:
http://www.techarena.in/guide/35347-windows-xp-…
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.
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. This was very easy to do on my Dell XPS M1210. After that you are good to go, so just plug in your flash drive and install Windows 7.
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. This was very easy to do on my Dell XPS M1210. After that you are good to go, so just plug in your flash drive and install Windows 7.
HELLO THERE
I HOPE SOMEONE COULD HELP ME WITH MY COMMENTS
OK
I GOT ONE ACER ASPIRE 3410 FROM CARREFOUR SPAIN (ITS COST ME ONE FREE GIFT CHECK FROM THEM 139 PLUS 140 IN CASH EUROS)
THE MOST WONDERFULL PRICE
CAME WITH HIS BOX UNTOUCHT
THE PROBLEM IS THAT WHEN I TURN IT OFF ITS APEARS ACER ECROVERY STARTS TO LOAD AND ITS GIVING ME AN ERROR
WELL I DON’T KNOW IF I HAD SOMETING GOD BY TRYING TO CHANGE HIS WINDOWS , I DELETED EVERYTHING WICH WAS ON THE HARD DRIVE , AND TRYING TO INSTAL FROM AN USB STICK 8 GB , JUST TRIED ‘7 ‘ VISTA BUT STILL NOT ABLE TO INSTAL
EVERYTIME IS GIVIND ME THE SAME ERROR THAT THE IMAGE IS BAD OR MISSING
I TRIED TO INSTAL FROM A DVD USB BUT THE SAME THING
SOW I RETUNED BACK , BUT THEY WILL CHECK IF I TRIED TO CHANGE THE SOFTWEAR , AND I AM WAINTING FOR THEM TO CALL ME
IF THEY DON-T WANT TO CHANGE ME THE MACHINE , I WILL KEEP HIM AS A BRICK ? OR HOW CAN I MAKE IT WORK ? SHELL I INSTAL LINUX ? AN THEN TO TRY TO COPIE ONE INSTALED SISTEM XP AND TO PUT IN C DIRECTORY TO SEE IF ITS WORKING ?
I HAVE NO IDEAS , I INSTALED A LOTS OFF SYSTEMS BUT WITH THIS ACER I HAVE NO MORE IDEAS ….
I AM A WINDOWS USER , I DONT MANAGE LINUX OR SOMETHING LIKE IT 🙁
I HOPE THAT I CAN RECIEVE SOME IDEAS … PLS DO SO
[email protected]
[email protected]
what sistem shell i instal to turn it on guys , i want to use this machine its pretty
I have no boot menu on my laptop.
And installation Windows 7 DVD was scratched.
What i did was:
1) download windows 7 installation ISO;
2) unpack it on flash drive;
3) boot from any installation CD/DVD (just to get close
to command promt);
4) format c:;
5) copy contents of flash drive to c:;
(xcopy f:*.* c:);
6) reboot.
The PC will boot from c: as it was some DVD and will actually install Windows on itself.
If you installed Vista or even later versions of XP from a DVD you know that it was very time consuming. Why not speed up the process by using a flash drive to install Windows 7. Windows 7 is currently in beta and Microsoft is offering it free to anyone to try out until August.