This tutorial will help you in creating a bootable USB drive of Windows Vista which you can use to install Vista in any system. It might become very useful when you don't have access to DVD drive.
1. First format your USB drive in NTFS file system. You can do it by attaching your USB drive to your system and then format it from My Computer window.
2. Now open Command Prompt window from Start menu. Right-click on Command Prompt entry in start menu and select "Run as administrator" option.
3. Now type diskpart in Command Prompt window and press Enter. It'll launch DiskPart program:
4. Now provide following command:
list volume
It'll show a list of all drives in your system. Look for your USB drive entry. As in the below screenshot, the USB drive is "G" which you can determine from its "Type" entry.
Now you have to select the USB drive volume by providing select volume no. command. Since in our case volume no. of USB drive is "Volume 4", the command would be:
select volume 4
Now we have to make this drive active. So provide active command:
active
Now exit from DiskPart using exit command.
5. Now we need to create Boot sector on USB drive. We'll use "bootsect.exe" utility for this task. You can find this utility in Windows Vista setup disk. It'll be present in "Boot" directory.
Now provide following command in Command Prompt:
bootsect /nt60 G:
Here G is drive letter of USB drive. Replace it with the correct drive letter if your system has some other letter for USB drive.
6. At last, copy all files/folders from Vista Setup DVD to your USB drive and you have done.
Now you can boot using your USB drive and can install Windows Vista in any system.
PS: You can also take a look at some free tools to automatically create bootable USB drives to install Windows using following link:
Ultimate Collection of Best Freeware to Create Bootable USB Drive to Install Windows and Linux
Posted by: Vishal Gupta | Categories: Windows Vista
Mustafa
you can copy all the contents of the disk from source dvd/cd to your usb using
xcopy x:*.* /s/e/f y:
where x: stands for your dvd/cd drive
and
y: stands for your usb.
before doing this, please check and note down original drive letters and replace them with x and y.
moatafa
Thanks !! Very useful !!!!
Nikola
Excellent, going as charmed :) just to install windows now .... :D hope that that will work as this tutorial :D
Alexandra
I have Vista Home Edition with an OEM licence, I need to instale it again, but have no idea how to handle this prob, because I have no Vista setup CD/DVD ...As far as I know, Microsoft doesn't produce anymore Vista, but I wanna keep it together with my OEM licence. What is to be done?
Tnx,
VG
^^ Dont you have a recovery disc for your system? Also do you have a recovery partition in your hard disk? Most of the branded computer systems come with recovery partition.
alexandra
No recovery partition on my hard disk. I just found a CD Recovery endeed, between the other received CD's, but for my real shame don't know how to manage it ;P
I explored it a little bit, but seems to be a very poor information compared to the 25 GB Window file dimension from C directory...
Trent
'bootsect' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. <---That's what I got when I entered the bootsect /nt60 g: command
Trent
I'd also like to know how you go from C:\Users\Administrator> to E:\boot> is this a step we have to take to indicate where the boot file is to be accessed?
VG
^^ You dont need to go to any other drive of folder. Simply execute the command.
jokis
like Trent said in his first post thats what I got when I entered the bootsect /nt60 g: command. Where is a problem?
VG
^^ Are you running bootsect command inside DISKPART or outside it?
Sparky
'bootsect' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. <---That's what I got when I entered the bootsect /nt60 g: command
Here is the part he left out. After you exit diskpart now type the drive letter of your CD/DVD drive that your Vista disk is in or the hard drive letter if its on there.
example
d: "press enter"
cd boot "press enter"
once in the boot folder continue with
bootsect /nt60 G:
geek
Thank you very much!!!!