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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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?
VG
^^ Sure.
Sam
@goldi - Perhaps the best advice for this thread. Simple and straight to the point~! I agree that the XCOPY command is very thorough, thus it takes several minutes to complete the transfer. Cheers!
vikas
i want a software how to prepere boot pandrive image than save in system i have no foll...drive & no cd & dvd drive and than format system how can make bootible pandrive plz 9336784070 or my email add.......... plz send a software thank's