Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Installing Windows 7 Using USB Drive

If you are a Netbooks user or own a desktop or laptop or Notebook PC that doesn’t come with a CD/DVD reader or if you prefer USB Pen drive over portable CD/DVD player then you may want a how-to or tutorial that can help you to install the latest Windows OS Windows 7 in your system.
 You can use the following tutorial to install Windows 7 specially on various netbooks,desktop,laptops or PC via usb drive only.




Here is a step by step guide to create a bootable Windows 7 USB Drive that will allow you to install Windows 7 without CD/DVD.

Step 1: First thing first, take a backup of your USB Drive on your hard disk.
Step 2: You need to run Command Prompt as an administrator. For this, Go to start menu and type cmd in the search box . Right click on it and select run as Administrator to use it with admin-rights .


Step 3: You now need to collect the disk number of USB drive. For this, first run ‘DISKPART’ command, and under ‘DISKPART’ command prompt run ‘list disk’ command and not down your USB disk number. In our case, it’s ‘Disk 1′.
Step 4: Now run ‘select disk 1′ to select the USB drive for further activity. Then you need to run ‘clean’ and ‘create partition primary’ command to remove everything on USB and make USB drive a primary partition respectively.


After making USB a primary partition, you need to select it by running ‘select partition 1′ command for further activity. Once selected, let activate it with ‘active’ command and then format it by running ‘format fs=NTFS’ command and now assign the drive with ‘assign’ command. Once done, run ‘exit’ command to leave ‘DISKPART’ command prompt option.

Instruction for Windows XP user for Step 4: As Windows XP ‘DISKPART’ command don’t show USB drive, you need to download a third party tool MBRwiz and extract it on your hard drive. First format the USB drive by right clicking on it and clicking on ‘Format’ option from right click context menu(uncheck quick format). Now run command prompt using following path: Start->run->cmd. Now dir to directory where you have extracted MBRWiz and first run ‘mbrwiz /list’ command to get the disk number of USB drive and then run ‘mbrwiz /disk=X /active=X’ (X is Disk Number of your USB Drive) to activate it. Now back to your system drive to follow further instruction.
Step 5: Now you need to make the USB Pen Drive a bootable one. For this, first insert the Windows 7/Vista DVD and note down the drive letter of the DVD drive. In our case it’s ‘I:’ and our USB is ‘O:’. You now need to run following command:
D:
cd d:boot
BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 G:
Exit
Step 6: Now you need to copy all files from the Windows 7 DVD to the formatted USB stick. For this, you can use ‘Windows Explorer’.


Step 7: You now have a bootable Windows 7 USB Pen Drive. Next, you need to change your default boot medium from Hard Drive to USB at system BIOS. Once done, reboot your system and follow the onscreen instruction to install Windows 7.
***This article is tutorial purpose. You should replace your Drive letter and Disk number as per your system otherwise this may damage your hard disk or whole system.

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