In this article, I will guide you through the simple process of installing Windows 7 from an USB flash drive. The main advantage of installing Windows 7 using an USB flash drive is the improvement on the speed. Obviously there are some added advantages. You don’t need to worry if the DVD drive cannot read the disc or if the Windows 7 installation disk is corrupted due to any scratches. It is also more convenient to carry around your USB flash drive rather than a DVD disc. Also, now a lot of new compact small laptops or desktops doesn’t even have an optical drive. Other than that, you can also carry useful software setups such as Firefox, 7-Zip, Chrome etc in the USB drive so you can install them after the completion of Windows 7.
Before you start, make sure you have at least a 4GB USB flash drive as the Windows 7 installation files will require around 3GB of space.
Follow the steps shown below to get a bootable Windows 7 installation USB disk drive:
1. First, insert your USB flash drive into the USB port.
2. Now, press [Windows key] + [R]. In the Run dialog box, type diskpart and click OK or press [Enter].
3. Type list disk and press [Enter].
4. Identify the disk number that represents your USB flash drive. Take caution as if you choose the wrong disk number then 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. As you can see in the above screenshot, my USB disk number is 2, so I have to type select disk 2 and press [Enter]. Here you have to type your correct USB disk number in order to select it. If it is 1 for you, then you have to type select disk 1 and then press [Enter].
6. Now, type clean and press [Enter]
7. Type create partition primary and press [Enter]
8. Type select partition 1 and press [Enter]
9. Type active and press [Enter]
10. Type format fs=fat32 and press [Enter]
11. Type assign and press [Enter]
12. Type exit and press [Enter]
13. Now, insert the Windows 7 installation 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 have followed and done each step correctly, the Windows 7 setup wizard should start loading from your USB flash drive.
Note: Your computer hardware specification is very important as the time taken to install Windows 7 will depend on it.
About Mezanul
This works flawlessly. This has helped me a lot, I have installed Windows 7 on my machine in under 10 minutes..saving me a lot of my time. Thanks a lot!