How To Create Bootable Windows 7, Vista, or XP USB Flash/Pen Drive Quickly
Posted August 29, 2009 – 1:04 pm in: Windows 7 TweaksUsers who have been struggling to follow our command prompt based install Windows 7 from USB flash drive and make bootable USB guides have a good reason to rejoice. Now you can create Windows 7, Vista, or the old XP bootable USB key with a few clicks. Yup, this is true. Read to know more!
Let’s begin the guide without wasting time. Just make sure that you have a pen drive with 4GB + capacity if you are making a bootable USB flash drive.
Requirements to create bootable Windows USB:
# Windows 7 or Vista ISO
# Pen drive with 4GB+ (2 GB is sufficient for XP)
# 15 Minutes of free time
Procedure:
1. Insert your USB flash/pen drive to your system and backup all the data from the USB as your USB drive will be formatted during the process.
2. Now download WinToFlash tool (free) from here.
3. Run the tool, and browse to your Windows 7, Vista, or XP DVD files (make sure that your USB drive letter is correct).
4. Click Create button to begin the bootable USB process. Wait for few minutes to see the bootable USB.
5. That’s all!
You might also like our how to make portable Windows 7 & install Windows 7 virtual box guides.
Tags: Bootable USB, Bootable Windows 7, Vista, XP USB Flash Drive
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31 Comments
Thanks, quick and easy guide
Testing .. Lets see how this works with eXperience’s release.
Didnt work. Baah..
Its excellent. Yeah i got it.
Hurray……….
You should also specify that USB should be formatted to NTFS.
Thank you for time and so good post!
It works!
It didn’t work. It just shows a white screen ‘UNetbottin’ Then a line ‘Default’ but nothing is happening.
dear all
i done all ur above instructions (Unetbootin)
i m unable to boot this method, i inserted the 2gb pen drive in the system and set the BIOS setting boot from usb hdd and it boot but not ahead to run, automatic boot run again and again please reply soon how can i run live winxp through pen drive
Thanks and regards
Pawan
@Pawan
First, you can’t use this guide to create a live XP. Second, please mentione the OS on which you are trying to create bootable USB. Finally, do you get any error while copying contents to USB?
@Shawo
On which OS you are running it?
I am having the same problem as Shawo. I am trying to install it on my netbook which currently has Windows XP.
@All
Since the tool was not working fine to most of the users, we have edited the post with a new tool. We hope this works fine. We apologies for the inconvenience.
“Incorrect source windows file”
Im using windows xp 64bits and i keep getting this error.
any solution?
It seems that your installation files are corrupted.
great tool – easy to use & works well
does not work
How about installing the os onto the usb?
how would i make my usb a local disk drive so that i can install win7 on it
Thanks a lot…. very easy to use. I used several other tutorials, and this was the only one that worked. Installed Windows 7 Ultimate on an Asus EEEPC 1005HA from 4GB flash drive.
Thanks a lot…. very easy to use.
Ok, tested last night and was able to create the USB from a DELL Windows XP MCE SP2 OEM DVD and it let me boot from the USB stick too and I went into the repair console – didn’t try an an actual windows install yet.
I tried using the .iso file but couldn’t get that working but noticed in your screenshot that it mentions PE file source whereas I was trying to use it as Windows File Source – maybe I’ll try that again tonight, although I’m not sure a non PE iso can be used.
Windows 7 Boots up from my usb drive but after i select install it says:
G:\Sources\install.wim not found. G happens to be my DVD drive.
Any clue why it trys to search my dvd drive and my floppy, i noticed my floppy light came on too.
Does the pen drives title need to be labled correctly?
my pen drive happens to be J drive
I was also able to use the tool to create a bootable USB version of my GHOST 10 cd by selecting the create from PE option and then poiting to my GHOST 10 cd.
Boots from the USB heaps quicker than windows.
One thing I have noticed is that if I use the USB in windows and then ‘Safely Remove’ it, it becomes unbootable and I have to re-copy NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from the CD to the USB.
Although I’m not sure that’s what’s happening as I plug it in at work and ‘Safely Remove’ and then when I get it home sometimes it seems to have become corrupt.
I know I initially played around with Lexar’s Bootit utility so maybe I’s left some setting on the USB incorrect, but I accidentally managed to wipe my hard drive using Bootit (must have pointed to the wrong drive) so I’ve been reluctant to use it again.
Might need to use GDISK that comes with Ghost to wipe the USB totally clean and start from scratch.
ive followed the instructions, all seemed fine. changed bios to boot ‘removable device’ first….
when i start the asus eee pc 4g it says ‘reboot and select proper boot device…’
any ideas?
hey after this is done will it always boot windows 7?
Ok sussed it.
When I went to GDISK (in DOS) to wipe the drive it came up with a message saying “Fixed disk 3 has partition(s) that extend past the end of the disk”.
So I wiped ther drive and then used FDISK and FORMAT and checked GDISK and there was no error.
Went back into WINDOWS and ran WinToFlash again and then back to GDISK in DOS to check the status of the drive and sure enough the partition error was reported.
So i wiped and reformatted again and went back to WinToFlash again but this time instead of usibg the default File System of FAT32 LBA, I changed it to FAT32 CHS.
Once complete, went back to GDISK in DOS again and this time there was no error reported for the drive.
The USB is a 4GB Lexar JD Firefly.
Not sure what the difference is between CHS and LBA – something to do with drive size maybe – but I thought I’d post and update for others to be aware of this.
I’ll keep an eye on my usb stick to see if it still gets corrupted or not.
Wonderful !!! never done anything so easy
This is great! I was struggling with diskpart not working in XP, and downloaded MBRwiz, and that wasn’t working, and was following all sorts of guides and such and this does it all in one click, and works!
Got my windows 7 files onto the thumb drive and made it bootable in under 5 minutes, now its installing on my netbook no problem! thanks a ton!
List disk not showing my pen drive. Before I have used the same pen drive to install vista ultimate.
Hi,
One question. Is it possible to utilize (WinToFlash) tool to install WIndows 7 on an external USB Hard Drive and boot from it? I have Acer ASPIREONE netebook with only 8 GB capacity and thought that this might help me overcome this issue.
thank you awesome stuff..it works for me n my gf
THAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
DRINK I BOTTLE BEER 4M ME
any body no make a folder of con in pc
Just so it’s been said, you’ve got to extract the .iso-file to a folder, and specify that folder as the “Windows files path”.. Before I did, I got the error message “Incorrect source windows file”, like someone else did. I suggest using WinRAR to extract the .iso.