How to
create a bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive.
USING COMMAND
PROMPT
Maybe you don't like that
Microsoft violated the GPL with the first version of the above tool (the
company has since GPLed the code), or you're old-school and just love using the
command prompt. Regardless of what your reasons are for creating a bootable Windows
7 USB drive manually, we have the scoop on how to do it. First, open the
command prompt (if you use UAC make sure to right click it and choose "Run
as administrator"), type "diskpart" without the quotes, and hit
enter. You can also get here by simply typing "diskpart" without the
quotes into the Start Menu and hitting enter.
Now type "list disk" without the quotes and hit enter.
Take a look at the Size column and figure out which disk number your USB drive
is. Ours is number 1, so we're going to type "select disk 1" without
the quotes and hit enter. Now we're going to wipe it by typing
"clean" without the quotes and hitting enter (make sure to do a
backup of the contents if you haven't already).
At this point we want to prepare the USB drive for the files and
make sure it is bootable. Type "create partition primary" without the
quotes and hit enter. Then type "select partition 1" without the
quotes and hit enter. Next type "active" without the quotes and hit
enter. Finally, type "format fs=fat32" without quotes and hit enter
(if you choose to use ntfs, you'll later have to run the "Bootsect.exe
/nt60 G:" command to put boot manager compatible files onto your USB flash
drive to make it a bootable device). This one will take a while, so go grab a
snack, we'll wait. When that's done, type "assign" without the quotes
and hit enter (this will assign a new drive letter to the USB flash drive).
An AutoPlay window like the one above will appear. Remember the
drive letter (in our case it is H:), close the window, type "exit"
without the quotes and hit enter. If you are working with an .ISO image, the
best way to do this last part is to mount the file with a program like Virtual Clone Drive. Alternatively, you can
extract the files from the .ISO image and simply copy them to the USB drive,
but since we've been using the command prompt up to this point, we'll show you
how to do the last step with it as well.
If you don't have the command prompt open, open it with
administrative privileges, type "xcopy f:*.* /s/e/f hg:" without the
quotes and hit enter. Note that you will likely have to replace "f:"
with the drive letter for your Windows 7 DVD and "g:" with the drive
letter for your USB flash drive. Don't worry if install.wim takes a while to
copy: it's easily the biggest file on the disc.
install any edition of Windows 7
This will make sure that your Windows 7 installer no longer has
a specific version of Windows 7 set as the default, and you will be prompted to
choose the version you want to install. Remember that while this gives you a
more universal Windows 7 installer, you still need to make sure you are
choosing the edition that you own, or you will not be able to activate Windows
7 with the key you have obtained.
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