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
This article was posted by VG in following section: Windows Vista.
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Puneet
Nice man keep it up, would be very useful...!!!
Osku Kaskisola
Thanks !! Very useful !!!!
Daniel
Is USB 2.0 faster than DVD drive?
goldi
Nice job VISHAL but it is boring because i have small comands
1)format pen drive for vista in NTFS & for xp in FAT32
2)Open command prompt with administrator right
3)provide following command
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
where d is cd drive containing installation disk & e is pen drive ,change it as ur
then enjoy installation with usb
Zack Sayed
Active command will only work on Vista. Not meant for XP.
So try using some Vista OS
Björn Johansson
Works also with Windows 7 build 6801 :)
aishu aka samurai
Here is the solution
Open my computer, right click your usb pen drive, goto properties, select hardware tab, select "USB DRIVE" click properties, goto policies tab, choose "optimize for performance tab, click ok and again ok. thats it dude now u can format it to NTFS by just right click on it from my computer, then format and u will see NTFS option :)
Lau
Thanks! This guide also works fine with Windows 7 (beta).
Just installed my Asus EeePC with Windows 7 from a USB memory stick in 20 minutes.
rix
Done ! :D Turorial works perfectly on windows XP pro sp3. only problem was with bootsect . but i manage to fix this ;)
Imran Khn
thanks to every body i have made this""""""""""""""""""""""