How to Install Windows 7 from USB Drive

I’ve tried researching on how to put in Windows XP from a USB flash drive before & when I finally managed to do it, the whole method is so unbearably slow that I thought I would NEVER install it from a USB flash drive. Recently there has been plenty of articles about installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive & I’ve decided to give it another try & see if there is any improvement on the speed.

Installing Windows from USB has its advantage which is you don’t require to worry if the DVD drive cannot read the disc or if there is any scratches on the Windows installation DVD, & it is more convenient to over around your USB flash drive than a DVD disc. Moreover, lots of new compact tiny laptops or desktops  doesn’t even have a CD/DVD drive. Other than that, you may even save useful application setups such as Firefox, Windows Live Messenger, 7-Zip, Orbit Downloader & etc in to the USB drive so you can install them three times Windows installation has been done.

Before they start, make positive you have at least a 4GB USB flash drive. Windows 7 installation files takes up around 3GB of space.

The manual way

1. Insert your USB flash drive.

2. Hit WIN+R, type cmd and click OK.

3. Type diskpart and hit ENTER

4. Type list disk, hit ENTER and identify the disk number for your USB flash drive. You MUST be very sure of this or else you’ll be formatting the wrong drive later on. If you have only one hard drive, then normally your USB flash drive will be disk 1.

5. Type select disk 1 and hit ENTER

6. Type clean and hit ENTER

7. Type create partition primary and hit ENTER

8. Type select partition 1 and hit ENTER

9. Type active and hit ENTER

10. Type format fs=fat32 and hit ENTER

11. Type assign and hit ENTER

12. Type exit and hit ENTER

13. Insert the Windows 7 installation DVD disc and copy everything from the DVD to your USB flash drive.

14. Boot up your computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive.