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.
Thanks to Dave Glover for this info...
Complete list of AskVG articlesThis article was posted in Windows Vista.
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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?
Abhinav
Hey m having diskpart version 6.0.6000 n when m trying to make it active it's saying like "There is no partition selected"...
I think it's d prob with the diskpart... Plz help.... PLZ....
amir
why my bootsect can't open??
amir
thanks man!!! its work!!
Dr vaibhav
Hi ..
1st of all thnx alot..
I hav kingston's 500 gb pen drive.
Wht u hav told earlier i undrstod abit f it.
Actualy m a doctor so couldnt got exact procedure wht u told above.
Can u plz giv me ready made cd image that if i burn / paste on my pen drive , wil make my pen drive as bootable xp drive.
Syed Muhmmad Abdullah
this works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
david howard
hi when i put e:\boot> it did not work,i changed it to e:\boot\bootsect /nt60 g:
it worked. just thought i would tell you.
but thanks anyway i would`nt have done it without your site,ta
dave
Michael
Thank you so much for this...
Can I use my usb as usual after this procedure?