{"id":7839,"date":"2012-07-06T21:57:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T14:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tom.ji42.com\/?p=7839"},"modified":"2020-11-09T07:26:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T00:26:59","slug":"how-to-make-a-usb-installation-disk-for-windows-7-without-extra-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/?p=7839","title":{"rendered":"How To Make A USB Installation Disk For Windows 7 Without Extra Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently bought a nice new setup for my media centre, but I didn\u2019t want to splash out on another DVD drive when physical media is basically dead \u2013 and swapping out a DVD drive from another machine just to install Windows seems like such a waste of time when I could be eating Christmas pudding. While Windows 8 is slated to allow media-less upgrade, today I\u2019ll outline a relatively easy way to make a bootable Windows installation USB drive, without having to download additional software. If your Christmas PC budget didn\u2019t quite stretch to a DVD drive, this is the tutorial for you.<\/p>\n<p>We described a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/tag\/install-windows-7-netbook-from-usb-flash-drive\/\">\u00a0similar method<\/a>\u00a0before, but it required a few external utilities. This time I\u2019ll assume you have a working Windows 7 computer with an existing DVD drive somewhere \u2013 and a working installation DVD to go with it. You\u2019ll use this machine to format, set up, and copy over the relevant files to a USB stick. You could also do this without a DVD drive from the ISO, but in that case your job would be a whole lot simpler because you could use the\u00a0official ISO -&gt; USB creator.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Note: You cannot use this method to install to a Parallels virtual machine. Your only option in that case is to use either a physical DVD or an ISO download and connect to that to the VM instead.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ll need:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A working Windows 7 system with a DVD drive and administrator rights.<\/li>\n<li>A Windows 7 installation DVD.<\/li>\n<li>4GB USB drive or larger.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This will also work with larger external hard drives instead of a USB thumbdisk, but be aware that all the data on the drive will be formatted and deleted.<\/p>\n<div id=\"muo_ad_middle\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Open An Elevated Command Prompt<\/h2>\n<p>Click\u00a0<em>Start -&gt; All Programs -&gt; Accessories<\/em>\u00a0and right-click on\u00a0<em>Command Prompt<\/em>. Select\u00a0<em>Run As Administrator<\/em>. Of course, you need to be able to authenticate as the administrator on the PC you\u2019re using.<\/p>\n<h2>Partitioning The Disk<\/h2>\n<p>Type:<\/p>\n<pre>DISKPART<\/pre>\n<p>This will open up the partitioning application. Next, type:<\/p>\n<pre>LIST DISK<\/pre>\n<p>Figure out which of the drives listed is your USB drive, and note the number. It\u2019s crucial you get this right, or you\u2019re going to end up losing data on other drives.<\/p>\n<p>Next, type the following series of commands, but replace the\u00a0<em>DISK<\/em>\u00a0number in the first line with the appropriate number from the above list. Here, my disk is number 1. Don\u2019t confuse this with<em>PARTITION 1<\/em>. That number should not change, even if your disk is 3.<\/p>\n<pre>SELECT DISK 1\nCLEAN\nCREATE PARTITION PRIMARY\nSELECT PARTITION 1\nACTIVE\nFORMAT FS=NTFS\nASSIGN\nEXIT<\/pre>\n<h2>Make It Bootable!<\/h2>\n<p>The format step may take a little while (it actually took about 30 minutes on my machine). When you\u2019re done, put in your installation DVD if you haven\u2019t already. Note down which drive letter your USB disk and Windows installation DVD are located at.<\/p>\n<p>Go back to your command prompt and type \u2013 assuming D: is your DVD drive with the install DVD, and U: is your USB drive:<\/p>\n<pre>D:\/BOOT\/BOOTSECT.EXE \/NT60 U:<\/pre>\n<p>This will basically make your USB drive bootable.<\/p>\n<h2>Copy Everything<\/h2>\n<p>The final step can be done from\u00a0<em>My Computer<\/em><strong>.<\/strong>\u00a0Just open up the installation DVD, highlight everything, and drag it over to your USB drive.<\/p>\n<p>This will also take a while.<\/p>\n<p>Now you should be all set \u2013 just insert the USB disk into your new PC, and enter the BIOS to adjust the boot order, or choose the option during start up which says\u00a0<em>Choose Boot Device<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s hear it for computers with no noisy and clunky DVD drives!<em>\u00a0Death to physical media!<\/em>\u00a0Or not \u2013 what do you think? Are you ready to go DVD-less?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently bought a nice new setup for my media centre, but I didn\u2019t want to splash out on another DVD drive when physical media is basically dead \u2013 and swapping out a DVD drive from another machine just to install Windows seems like such a waste of time when I could be eating Christmas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6cOVM-22r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7839"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25330,"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7839\/revisions\/25330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.tomwork.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}