Please note: during this procedure you'll lose any data on your USB flash drive. Please be extra careful during formatting, choosing the wrong drive will erase it completely. This guide provided as-is, at your own risk. You will need:
- PC running Windows XP/Vista/7/8
- Windows 7, 32/64-bit (depending on the system) installation disk
- USB drive with at least 8GB of free storage
Preparing the USB drive:
- Open command prompt as administrator - Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select Run as administrator or type cmd in the Start search bar.
- Run diskpart utility by typing diskpart into command prompt window and pressing “Enter”.
- Locate your USB drive disk number by executing list disk. We'll assume the USB drive is 1.
- Run the following commands:
- select disk 1
- clean
- create partition primary
- select partition 1
- active
- format fs=NTFS
- assign
- exit
Now we have prepared USB drive. Lets make it bootable:
- Insert Windows 7, 32/64-bit installation disk into DVD drive. Let's assume it's D
- Go to D:\boot (cd d:\boot)
- If your USB drive letter is “e” please run bootsect /nt60 e:
- 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 flash drive!
