Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Installing an operating system from a USB drive bring several advantages: USB drivers are small, USB drives transfer data quicker than CDs, and they are generally more convenient. In this guide, you’ll learn how to install Windows 7–or any operating system–from a USB thumb drive.

UPDATE: You can download the RTM versions of Windows 7 Ultimate, Professional, and Home Premium here (64/32-bit available.)

Preparing Your USB Drive

To prepare your USB drive, do the folllowing:

1. Use a thumb drive that you don’t mind deleting everything from
2. Press WINKEY+R to Open the Run dialogue (Start, type run, click run)
3. Type diskpart and hit Enter (If you don’t have diskpart, get it here)
4. Run the list disk command
5. Run select disk 3 where the “3” is the corresponding number of your USB drive
6. Run clean
7. Run create partition primary
8. Run active to make the partition active
9. Run format fs=fat32 quick to format the drive as Fat32
10. Run assign to give the drive a letter

Putting Windows 7 Installation Files on a USB Drive

This guide will show you how to do put the Windows 7 Installation files on a USB drive; however, this method can be applied using an operating system’s installation files.

To put the operating system’s installation files on a USB drive, do the following:

Using the Install DVD

1. Put the installation DVD in your DVD drive
2. Open Computer, right click on the DVD drive and click Explore
3. Select all the files (CTRL+A) on the DVD and copy them (CTRL+C)
4. Paste (CTRL+V) the files on the previously-formatted thumb drive

Using an ISO Image

1. Locate the ISO file
2. Open the file with a utility capable of browsing ISO images (7 zip works well)
   1. Download 7zip and install it
   2. Right click the ISO file and select 7-Zip > Open Archive
3. Extract the contents of the ISO to your previously formatted hard drive

Installing an Operating System from a Thumb Drive

To install an operating system from a thumb drive, follow this guide:

1. Load the operating system installation files on to your thumb drive (see above)
2. Shutdown your PC
3. Turn on your PC and press F8/ESC (they key used to select your boot menu)
4. Select USB drive (or similar description) and hit Enter
5. Install Windows 7

If you need more help installing Windows 7, a comprehensive guide is available in Windows 7 – The Pocket Guide.

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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