How do you make a USB drive bootable so I can load W7 on a netbook?

limneos said:

That's how I do it and I think it's the easiest and fastest way :


Step 1. Format the USB Flash Disk



Run CMD (elevated) and type:

1. diskpart
2. list disk (*now find your USB disk number, you'll find it by its size)
3. select disk 1 (*if your USB is disk 1)
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. select partition 1 (*this is 1, no matter what number is your USB disk)
7. active
8. format fs=fat32 (or ntfs, works with both)
9. assign
10. exit

Note: Don't type the things in parentheses above!!

Step 2. Copy Windows 7 or Vista's DVD content to the Flash Disk





Still on CMD, assuming your dvd is drive d: and your usb is drive e:

• xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

You're done. Works perfectly.You'll make the fastest install ever.

nice work thank you

cheers brad

I actually really enjoy working in the command line window.
I changed the text color to a bright green on the black background, changed the default size if the window, use a nice fancy font, but mostly I still love using commands and switches.
I know in today's super Gooie world that most folks don't even know what the CMD window is or how to do anything in it and I think that's a shame. Everyone should retain the basic knowledge of command line interface, it's extremely useful when things go sideways in Gooie.

hi the links provided in above posts state that larger than 4 gig drives wont work but i just did it with a 32 gig drive and it works great

4 GB USB thumbdrive (NOT MORE THAN 4GB! Booting from USB flash devices isn’t supported on devices bigger than 4GB. Smaller USB sticks won’t work either since W7 won’t fit on them!)

cheers brad

I have done it with 8GB, 32GB split in 5 partitions with multiple installations...all of them worked great.

Hello win7.

If you right-click on my pointed area and select properties, you get the font and layout options among others.