Install Windows 7 from a USB drive the very easy way
Open the command prompt with admin rights. Type cmd in Start menu search box and hit Shift+Ctrl+Enter.
To keep things really easy, if you see text in upper case, it means this is what you type into the command prompt (you don’t need to type in upper case).
Next type
DISKPART
this loads the diskpart application we need to proceed
Then type
LIST DISK
the image above shows our 4 GB USB drive is listed as DISK 2
so you have to type
SELECT DISK 2 (your USB Drive may have a different number, don’t follow exactly this text it depends on your usb drive)
You will get a successful response “Disk 2 is now the selected disk”
Next we want to clean the USB drive
Type:
CLEAN
you will get a successful response ‘DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk”.
After the drive is cleaned follow the list in the image above (detailed below in list order) – you can also note the successful text responses from the OS as you enter each command.
SELECT DISK 2 (or what number your USB drive has)
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
Formatting can take a little time depending on the size of the drive, our 4GB unit took about 10 minutes to format - you will see a percentage readout until it is finished.
Next type:
ASSIGN
EXIT (DISK PART will exit)
Type D: CD BOOT (substitute the “D” if necessary with the letter of your Windows 7 DVD drive)
then key
CD BOOT
then
BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 E: (substitute the “E” if necessary with the letter of your now ready USB drive) – we are telling the system to create a boot sector file on the USB drive.
Now you can exit the command prompt and copy all the files on the Windows 7 DVD to the USB drive.
Once this step is finished you’ll be ready to boot from this drive, all you need to do is configure your motherboard bios setup to boot first from USB rather than hard drive or optical drive. If you don’t know how to do this, refer to your specific motherboard manual or search the internet.
