HOW TO: Install Windows 7 from a USB stick

This might have been covered earlier, but I guess a fresh post would be in order as many of you have recently acquired a beta product key and the latest ISO image of Windows 7. This guide is good if you want to install to a netbook or laptop that doesn't have a CD-ROM or if you'd like to get a speedier install on your desktop PC :)

See also: USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

1. Download the latest ISO image of Windows 7
2. Use MagicISO or any other SW that can read and extract the contents of the ISO.
3. Extract all the files to a folder of your choice ( ex. C:\Win7). If you use MagicISO you'd want to right click on the ISO file and then select "Extract to..."
4. attach a USB stick of at least 4 GB size
5. Select "Start->Run..." and type "cmd.exe"
6. At the DOS prompt type " diskpart"
7. type "list disk"

You will now see a list of all installed hard drives and any attached USB drives, please make sure that you select the correct disk at the next step. If you select the wrong disk you will loose any data on that disk and potentially erase your entire system. Be double sure you know what you're doing before continuing!

For the rest of this guide I will assume that my USB drive is "Disk 3" and that I've extracted the ISO to e:\

Now, continue to type, in sequence, at the diskpart prompt (without qoutation marks):
8. "select disk 3"
9. "clean"
10. "create partition primary"
11. "select partion 1"
12. "active"
13. "format fs=fat32"
14. "assign"
15. "exit"

You should now have a clean and bootable USB drive :) Now we need to get the Windows install files on to the USB drive:

16. At the DOS prompt type "xcopy e:\*.* /s/e/f f:\" ( in this set of commands we assume that your USB drive is mounted as F:\ )

That's it! Safely unplugg your USB drive and boot your netbook/laptop/desktop from it. The install we be done in no time...

I've used this method to install WinXP, OSX and Win7 on my netbook that. It should work with any CD/DVD based installation.

Happy hunting!

I tried this once or twice and it didn't like me so all i do is format the stick like above then just highlight the files in my Win 7 dvd and copy them over to the usb like normal..

Also if you've got an asus board just press F8 at boot and select the usb from the list..
No need to go into the bios and change anything :)

in this tutorial, can anyone tell me if its ok to directy copy the extracted files to the usb drive instead of "xcopy e:\*.* /s/e/f f:\" ?

Hell yeah, i directly copied the files to usb drive without any commands. Now i m ready to restart my pc and boot with usb drive. Lets see what happens.