How to Make a Windows 7 or Windows 8 Bootable USB Stick or Smart Card
Intro: How to Make a Windows 7 or Windows 8 Bootable USB Stick or Smart Card
This Instructable will show you how to make a Windows 7 or 8 Bootable USB Device
Either on a Thumb Drive or Smart Media Card ie: SD, CF.
Follow these steps exactly:
1. Insert your USB drive or Smart Media Drive into your computer, browse my computer to verify the disk letter of your USB stick for future use
2. Launch a DOS Box to do this Click Start and type in the Search Box the letters CMD and press enter.
3. Type the following commands
a. DISKPART
b. LIST DISK
Find your disk by number in the list this is imperative you get it right otherwise you will be formatting the wrong drive, Remember drives in there formatted capacity are usually a bit less that the retail size ie: 32GB = 29.0 gb in List Disk, 64 GB CF card = 57 or 58 gb in Select Disk. And so on. So look at size, use your common sense and be careful. If in doubt you can check with me at my website http://www.stupidlysimpletutorials.net. Drivers can be found here too!! If you log into the NAS under System Login
c. SELECT DISK 1 Where 1 is equal to your disk number listed above.
d. CLEAN
e. CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
f. SELECT PARTITION 1
g. ACTIVE
h. FORMAT FS=NTFS
i. ASSIGN
j. EXIT
4. Now insert your Windows 7 Install disk or find a good ISO of it on your hard drive and extract it to a folder you can remember. Using a good windows DVD is the easiest way.
5. Now go back to the DOS Box and type the following
k. Assuming your DVD drive is D: type the following command
l. D:
m. CD BOOT
n. Or manually change to the drive by typing the following
o. Now you should be at the directory Boot on your CD image, now type the following.
p. BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H: (Where h: is the letter of your USB Stick, there is a space between EXE and the front slash & between the NT60 AND THE H:)
q. Now go back to the root of your DVD image by typing CD\ . And type the following.
r. Xcopy *.* /e H: where H is the letter of your USB stick. (There is a space between xcopy and *.*, between *.* and forward slash e and between the /e and H:
s. Once all files are copied you will be ready to use the boot stick in any computer that supports USB bootable media.
t. If your computer has a onetime boot option F key use that in lieu of changing it in BIOS . It is usually F8 or F11 or F12
u. After you finish copying the setup files to the USB device you can now add any other driver folders you may have or Program installers to make your one-stop-shop disk.
6. Enjoy
For more neat things and files and downloads check out my website at
http://www.stupidlysimpletutorials.net
Either on a Thumb Drive or Smart Media Card ie: SD, CF.
Follow these steps exactly:
1. Insert your USB drive or Smart Media Drive into your computer, browse my computer to verify the disk letter of your USB stick for future use
2. Launch a DOS Box to do this Click Start and type in the Search Box the letters CMD and press enter.
3. Type the following commands
a. DISKPART
b. LIST DISK
Find your disk by number in the list this is imperative you get it right otherwise you will be formatting the wrong drive, Remember drives in there formatted capacity are usually a bit less that the retail size ie: 32GB = 29.0 gb in List Disk, 64 GB CF card = 57 or 58 gb in Select Disk. And so on. So look at size, use your common sense and be careful. If in doubt you can check with me at my website http://www.stupidlysimpletutorials.net. Drivers can be found here too!! If you log into the NAS under System Login
c. SELECT DISK 1 Where 1 is equal to your disk number listed above.
d. CLEAN
e. CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
f. SELECT PARTITION 1
g. ACTIVE
h. FORMAT FS=NTFS
i. ASSIGN
j. EXIT
4. Now insert your Windows 7 Install disk or find a good ISO of it on your hard drive and extract it to a folder you can remember. Using a good windows DVD is the easiest way.
5. Now go back to the DOS Box and type the following
k. Assuming your DVD drive is D: type the following command
l. D:
m. CD BOOT
n. Or manually change to the drive by typing the following
o. Now you should be at the directory Boot on your CD image, now type the following.
p. BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H: (Where h: is the letter of your USB Stick, there is a space between EXE and the front slash & between the NT60 AND THE H:)
q. Now go back to the root of your DVD image by typing CD\ . And type the following.
r. Xcopy *.* /e H: where H is the letter of your USB stick. (There is a space between xcopy and *.*, between *.* and forward slash e and between the /e and H:
s. Once all files are copied you will be ready to use the boot stick in any computer that supports USB bootable media.
t. If your computer has a onetime boot option F key use that in lieu of changing it in BIOS . It is usually F8 or F11 or F12
u. After you finish copying the setup files to the USB device you can now add any other driver folders you may have or Program installers to make your one-stop-shop disk.
6. Enjoy
For more neat things and files and downloads check out my website at
http://www.stupidlysimpletutorials.net
9 Comments
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Uncle Kudzu 10 years ago
Does this create a ramdisk or something like? Or is this for installation of the OS to a permanent drive?
I'm very familiar with bootable ISO (CDs in my case) in Linux. I use Puppy Linux, which loads itself into ram from a CD, then bang! instant super quick OS.
webdevii 10 years ago
This creates a USB either Thumb Drive or a Smart Media Card ie: CF, San Disk SD or the like. and makes it bootable so you can boot to it and proceed with an Install of windows. Do not confuse this with a "Live CD" This is not a Windows Live CD but
Just another way that is far more efficient than using the Installation CD or DVD that you buy when you buy a copy of Windows v. 7 or v.8 And another benefit is that you can add additional information like drivers and other app installers to this thus having a one stop shop without doing the Disk Shuffle but everything on one piece of media.
Thank you for your interest
Rob
Uncle Kudzu 10 years ago
Thanks for the clarification! I can see how what you're doing would be very useful.
Yeah, creating a Ram Disk would be nice for Windows. Surely someone is working on that. It takes longer to boot when the OS is loading to Ram, but then you get a really quick machine. I boot my Puppy Linux from a CD, then access files that I use that are anchored on a hard drive so there is the speed of a Ram Disk and the persistence of a hard drive (for settings and other saved stuff). I can run it on top of Windows without touching it, or I can get to stuff from Windows if I need to.
Thanks again!
webdevii 10 years ago
I have ran Windows 98 in a Windows XP DOS CMD window, since Windows 98 was designed for Slow 386 / 486 and early Pentiums running Win 98 on a Dual Core Pentium 4 was like unheard of with Windows 98 thus it practically tripped over itself trying to keep up with the hardware. Quite amusing to say the least. To do it now days what I would suggest is looking at something like Rocket Drive, it is a form of a Ram Disk Configuration utility that allows the user to allot 'X' amount of RAM to be used as Disk Space and assigns a drive letter to it, then you just proceed to run Windows 7 Install and point it to the Drive letter that has been created in RAM instead of a physical Spinner Drive ie: standard Hard Drive. However you better have a machine with at least 128 GB of Memory and allot 96 GB of memory to a Ram Disk for Windows and leave the remaining 32 for the System. You will have a boot time of oh probably 2 seconds or less, as what happens is it stores an image on a real Hard Drive, During boot Rocket Drive has to flash the Windows installed image from the hard drive to the alloted Ram Disk then launch windows. since wihen you turn off your computer your ram is considered Volitle and will not retain the image thus on each reboot it must flash the image to the Ram Disk before it boots, but once up and running correctly you will have the fastest windows install ever. Remember the Fastest hard drives have a 4 to 5 millisecond latency, memory is measured in Nanoseconds.
webdevii 10 years ago
I like your idea of Ram Disk installation, I used to run Windows 98 in a Ram Disk and bam it flies!! In fact I actually installed it within an already installed copy of Windows 7 using the CMD prompt (aka Dos Box)
webdevii 10 years ago
I am running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit in a ramdisk on a watercooled 8 core xeon machine, alloting 32 gb of memory for the ramdisk and the remaining 32 for the Dd it almost trips over itself it is so fricken fast, just some minor glitches of course using the tm RamRocket Drive Software but otherwise it is a scooter
Dev