Creating a Bootable Windows 7 USB.

Sometimes it becomes a thing of great pain to install Windows 7 on a netbook or on a system without any optical drive.Well certainly there are tools out there that can do the job for you.In this post we will be seeing two method for creating a bootable windows 7 USB.

Method 1

Using the windows 7 USB/DVD Tool

The windows 7 USB/DVD Tool was released by Microsoft on October 23, 2009 you can get it here.

System Requirements

• Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)
• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• 50MB of free space on your hard drive
• DVD-R drive or 4GB removable USB flash drive

For Windows XP Users
The following applications must be installed prior to installing the tool:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 must be installed. It can be downloaded here.
• Microsoft Image Mastering API v2 must be installed. It can be downloaded here.

Using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool

 

Before you run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, make sure you have already copied the Windows 7 ISO file to your hard drive.After that follow these steps

1. Click the Windows Start button, and click Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool in the All Programs list to open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
2. In the Source File box, type the name and path of your Windows 7 ISO file, or click Browse and select the file from the Open dialog box. Click Next.
3. Select USB Device to create a copy on a USB flash drive or select DVD disk to create a copy on a DVD disk.
4. If you are copying the file to a USB flash drive, select your USB device in the drop-down list and click Begin copying. If you are copying the file up to a DVD, click Begin burning. 

However this must be noted that this tool is not likely to work with custom ISO images.

Method 2

Using the command prompt and BOOTSECT utility.

This utility is already included in the Windows 7 DVD it resided inside the BOOT folder of the DVD.To create a bootable USB using this method simply follow these steps:

   1.  Format the USB using NTFS file system.

   2.  Copy the contents of the ISO to the USB using Winrar or Isobuster

   3.  Open a command prompt as administrator.

   4.  Assuming that X:\ is the path of the USB device type in the following

        commands

        X: (hit enter) (changes the working drive to X: i.e. USB device

        now type CD boot (hit enter) (changes the directory) now type in the

        following command BOOTSECT /NT60 X: (hit enter)

   
and then you will get a message like Bootcode updated successfully on target volume.
You're  done.
Don't forget to change the boot device priority from bios.