How To Create A Windows 7 USB Installation Disc

About Windows 7 installation

It is always a good idea to create a copy of your Windows OS installation disc, as there is a good chance of the disc becoming damaged and unreadable. To avoid this, create a Windows 7 installation USB stick using the OS installation disc.

Creating a Windows 7 USB installation stick

The Windows 7 help website online provides detailed instructions on how to do this. First of all, you need to have a flash disk of at least 4 GB size. Obviously, this is because the size of the installation files for different Windows 7 versions come close to 3 GB. So, connect a 4 GB pen drive to the system.

You need to format the flash drive before you copy the contents of the Windows 7 installation disc into it. So, if you have any important data stored in the USB disk, remember to copy it before you format the drive.

Now, launch the Windows 7 Run command box from the Start Menu or by simply pressing the key combination Windows + R. In to the text field in the Run command box, type in the command cmd and press Enter. This would launch the Windows 7 command prompt.

Now, on the Command Prompt window, type in the command DISKPART, and press Enter. After this, execute the command LIST DISK. This would display all the storage disks available in the system in the order Disk 0, Disk 1, Disk 2, etc and their storage sizes in GB or MB. You can easily identify the USB disk from this list, as its size will be shown as 4 GB or 3000+ MB.

Let us assume that Disk 2 is the USB disk with 4 GB storage size. If so, then your command should be SELECT DISK 2. The Command Prompt would now display the message Disk 2 is now the selected disk. Now, execute these following commands.

·       CLEAN press Enter

·       CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY press Enter

·       SELECT PARTITION 1 Enter

·       ACTIVE Enter

·       FORMAT FS = NTFS Enter. This would start the formatting process. When it is completed, type EXIT and press Enter.

Contact Windows support

Now, insert the Windows 7 installation disc and go back to the Command Prompt. Let assume that G:\ is your DVD drive and H:\ is your flash drive. If so, you need to execute these following commands.

·       G: CD BOOT and press Enter

·       BOOT CD, then Enter

·       BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:, then Enter

This would copy the installation files to the flash drive and create the Windows 7 installation stick. For more information about this, visit the Windows 7 help website online.