Installing Windows 7 from a USB Flash Drive

Software There are a good number of guide to creating a bootable USB disk to install Windows 7 which is handy when installing on a system that may not have a DVD drive (or any drive at all). Some people like to keep their Media Center HTPC as small as possible and taking the disk drive out of the equation makes that a bit simpler. When you can rip all your disks to the hard drive and transfer them over the network, why not? The downside, of course, is how to install the operating system to begin with. Simple, just use a cheap USB flash disk.

Many of the other guides that can be found through a simple Google search seem to have gone to great lengths to overcomplicate the process. To get started we’ll need a USB flash drive a least 4gb in size, a copy of VirtualCloneDrive (which is completely free from SlySoft) and a downloaded Windows 7 ISO which can be gotten from MSDN or Technet. Microsoft will also provide the ability for regular home users who aren’t members of these services the opportunity to purchase and download online as well once the retail version is available.

First, download and install VirtualCloneDrive from SlySoft and setup a virtual drive. Once you’ve completed that, mount the Windows 7 ISO by right-clicking the VirtualCloneDrive icon in the system tray, selecting the drive letter and choosing mount. Locate your downloaded Windows 7 ISO and mount the image.

Now insert the USB flash disk and open Windows Explorer. Locate the drive in Explorer and right-click to bring up the options. Select format to bring up the format dialog and set the option to format as an NTFS file system. The rest of the options can be left at default.

Next let’s make the USB disk bootable by opening an elevated command prompt (start –> “cmd” –> ctrl-shift-enter) and changing to the mounted Windows 7 ISO image. Enter “cd E:\boot”, where E is the drive where you’ve mounted the ISO image. Next enter “bootsect /nt60 F:\”, changing F to the USB disk drive letter.

Now, back in Windows Explorer, simply drag and drop all the files from the mounted ISO image onto the USB disk creating a copy of the installation disk. This process has created a duplicate of the installation media and set the USB disk as bootable. Next you’ll need to check the BIOS of the system to enable booting from USB. Unfortunately BIOS setups vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer and you’ll need to consult the motherboard guide or manufacturers website for details. Usually it’s as simple as entering the Boot section and adding the USB disk entry prior to the hard drive.

Then, with the USB disk inserted, reboot the machine and the system should now boot to the USB disk we created. The rest of the setup process should be identical to installing from a DVD disk. That’s all there is to it!

Original Article Link: Hack7MC.com