How to Create Bootable USB Drive to Install Windows Vista?

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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

Other similar articles that may interest you:

This article was posted by VG in following section: Windows Vista.

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sajibe

every time i write active it says no pertition selected select a pertition and then try again

what should i do

all the proccess was folloed properly

help me
phout

it is not work from bootsect /nt60 g:

how to do with this parts

please help
Jonnybl@ze

While doing this tutorial, I think I found some helpful info for those of you that had problems. 1. Make sure you can BOOT to your usb drive! This is probably the most important step. The first usb flash drive I used did not work. I wasted a couple of hours messing with it then put in my car strereo with an mp3 on it and it would not play on that either. The second flash card I used, worked without a flaw, on the first try. 2. Copy and paste the boot file from the dvd or iso and paste it to the root of C drive. For some reason, when I change directories to D (dvd drive) in command prompt, it changes for a second and then switches right back to C. I can change my directory to any location on hdd's but not to my dvd drive. Very strange. 3. It also works with external usb hdd's. Both 2.5" bus powered and 3.5" self powered external drives. Don't forget to change the boot order in your bios or push button (for me F12) for boot selection. I put a 3 gb partition with the boot files then copied and pasted Windows 7, Vista, and 2008 files onto the remaining partition. Then you can copy and paste which ever version you want to load into the 3 gb bootable partition. Be sure that the boot partition is first.

Thanks VG for the great info.
Joel

this has been the best explanation I found on the web about making a bootable usb, very helpful, thanks!!!
Shaun Bliss

Actually, when you set the active partition to Active and it gives an error about the Partition, it has actually set it to active anyway. You can see this when you relist the volumes and you will see a little asterisk next to the active volume which you just set.

You can then proceed with the bootsector stuff. I did have no luck formatting the volume in
NTFS, but it does seem to work in FAT32 anyway.
Christopher Varghese

Thanks a lot yar. It comes in handy for people like me who are computer illiterates and stil want to attempt on installing vista on a mini laptop without a DVD drive.
Keep up the good work.
Raza

Dear Vishal,

Im using Windows Vista Home Premium and I want to install Windows 7 RC.

The problem is that i cant open bootsect.exe from boot directory in Windows 7 RC Installation folder.

It opens up then closes.

Please help me
VG

^^ You'll need to first open Command Prompt window and then type bootsect command.
Alcodir

This information was very useful and i was able to create a bootable usb key.

Thank you very much!!
Jerome

The pendrive i have is 3.75 G which i think should work but i keep having an error and that is; when i select list the disk part in the command prompt it keeps telling me that "There are no fixed disk to show and aside that it also says there are no partitions.How do i over come this?