How to Create Bootable USB Drive to Install Windows Vista?
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 as Administrator using any method given here.
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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
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Now we have to make this drive active. So provide active command:
active
Now exit from DiskPart using exit command.
exit
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
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,
^^ 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.
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…
‘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
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?
^^ You dont need to go to any other drive of folder. Simply execute the command.
like Trent said in his first post thats what I got when I entered the bootsect /nt60 g: command. Where is a problem?
^^ Are you running bootsect command inside DISKPART or outside it?
‘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:
Hello. I am following your instructions, it was going flawlessly, and when I got to my “ACTIVE” command, it tells me no partition is selected. How do I make my “removeable” into a “Partition”?
i Got a problem with it, i have install that in my windows 8 and it say when it startup BootMgr file misssing Help.
Sorry my english
Im getting “‘bootsect.exe’ is not recognized as an internal or external command
operable program or batch file. Trying to do Windows xp bootable usb.
Thanks very much!!!! It saved me after hours struggling!!!
Like Robert, The same happened to me about the “Active” command, no partition selected. Now what?
When i ran active command in diskpart it said no partition selected. i did do select volume 4 command and it was volume 4 though what to do??
diskpart
list disk
select disk 0 (if disk 0 is C:\)
clean
create partition primary size=100 (size=100 only then if you like to create 100mb partition)
format fs=ntfs quick
active
exit
thanks a million. It worked when everything else failed
This worked graciously.! Thanks. I did however have to move the dvd contents to my jump drive in the inception of the entire process, due to a couple of prior failures. But back in action non-the less. ; )
Hey Guys idk if this will help but i found out that i could not make the VOLUME as ACTIVE so instead i looked around and now instead do this
CMD (as admin)
TYPE WITHOUT ” ”
“list disk”
“select disk no.” (no.=which ever number u want to select)
“select partition no.” (no.=which ever number u want to select, selecting the partition of selected disk)
“active”
this worked for me so im am sorry if it didnt work for the rest of u but i tried
I can create bootable USB drive in Ubuntu Linux using Gparted. I can also create partitions with GParted. Is it essential to do these steps in a Windows environment? If so, could I boot Hiram’s CD and Win XP from there to follow these steps from 2 on? Particularly running the .ece file would have to be within a Windows OS.
X15-19135.exe
boot.wim
install.wim
I changed my Toshiba Satellite to a larger hard drive and copied the Windows Vista programs over in Ubuntu and USB adapter for my old hard drive. This will not boot and hoping this bootable USB drive approach would work.
^^ I’m not sure whether Hiren CD will allow to use those commands. But you can use 3rd party software to create bootable USB drive:
https://www.askvg.com/ultimate-collection-of-best-freeware-to-create-bootable-usb-drive-to-install-windows-and-linux/
this is a horrible tutorial , thankfully people in the comments section offered the correct steps
That was very helpful guide. Thank you for sharing with us. You are a life saver for me.
Hello, I tried above process but when I am trying to run command ” bootsect /nt60 I:” it gives me error of ” Could not map drive partitions to the associated volume device objects: Access is denied.” Please help me.
Awesome. It worked flawlessly. You are really a life saver dude. Thanks to “Sparky” too to guide me to access from the disk.
‘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
inside my rocovery dvd in boot folder there is no bootsect.exe file
hey,
(*note* it only gives me 3 volumes and 2 is my usb flash drive)
when is do select volume 2, it sais selected, but when i type active and do enter, it sais: “there’s no partition selected, select a partition and try again”
pls someone help me!!!
can i transfer files from my windows vista cd to a san disk the laptop i want to install it on doesn’t have a cd drive and are there any san disks with enough space to hold the files, i didn’t see any comments here about it
^^ Yes. You need at least 8GB USB stick for it.
Hi,
The tutorial worked for me to create a USB. But however, when I use the USB for booting Vista-Business, it does not boot from the USB. And no message or comments. Only a flashing cursor on the left side top. Can anyone help me on what to do?