Having a bootable USB is very essential, especially if you want to finish installing Windows faster. Using a bootable USB to install an operating system (OS) not only makes the installation faster, but also saves a DVD!
Creating or using a USB drive to install Windows operating systems is very easy if you follow the steps mentioned below.
If you are planning to use a bootable USB to install Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 or Vista please refer our guides:
How to clean install Windows 10 from ISO
How to create bootable UEFI USB of Windows 10
Coming back to bootable USB guide, here we assume that you are using either Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, or Windows 10 to create your bootable USB.
Prepare Windows 10/8/7 bootable USB drive
Step 1: Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.
Step 2: Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.
Step 3: When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:
DISKPART and hit enter.
LIST DISK and hit enter.
Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.
Step 4: In this step, you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self-explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
(Format process may take few seconds)
ASSIGN
EXIT
Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.
Step 5: Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “H” as my USB drive letter.
Step 6: Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:
D: CD BOOT and hit enter. Where “D” is your DVD drive letter.
CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.
BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:
(Where “H” is your USB drive letter)
Step 7: Copy Windows DVD contents or ISO file contents to the USB drive now.
You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).
Note that this bootable USB guide doesn’t work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on Windows XP computer.
