Problem with installing Win7 from USB drive by using WinXP

Hello all,

Currently, I'm still using Win XP and I think it's time for me to upgrade my PC to Windows 7 (very late, I know). I already have the ISO file downloaded from Microsoft official site, but when I tried to burn it into a USB drive (I'm using ISO TO USB program), I got stuck with "this drive is not bootable" error. After a bit of browsing around the net I found out that I must first make the USB bootable. I tried to use the command prompt diskpart->disk list, but then got stuck again since it seems that my XP machine does not recognize my USB drive (it doesn't show up on the disk list at all). Is there any XP-compatible program out there that I can use (for free preferably) to make my USB drive bootable?

My PC's specs
OS : Windows XP Pro SP3
Motherboard : ASUS H61M-C
CPU : G2020 @ 2.90GHz 2.89GHz
RAM : DDR3 3.19 GB
Storage : Multiple HDDs with 320GB to 1TB capacity

Sorry for the dumb problem, I'm a noob when it comes to Installing OS, please bear it with me. Thank you in advance, I appreciate any and all suggestions.

Paul Black said:

Hi Ballion,

Welcome to SevenForums!



In order to install Win 7 you need to burn the ISO [you can't just copy and paste it because it won't work] to the USB to make it bootable.

Everything will be deleted from the USB during this process.

To burn the ISO to a USB, you can either use Rufus 3.8 or Rufus 3.8 Portable. You will probably need to use a Win 7 machine to do this if one is available to you!

Here is the Rufus website for further information => Rufus.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the reply. I'm well aware of the fact that the ISO is needed to be properly burned into the USB, not just copy-pasted into it. Guess I'll just have to rent a PC with Win7 and then using Rufus or using diskpart command to make it bootable.

Paul Black said:

Hi Ballion,



I only said that you needed a Win 7 computer because the Rufus specifications say that is the minimum requirement for Rufus to work properly!

You could try it on your XP computer to see if it does work!

I have tried it, even trying out the older versions and the portable versions. They won't run on my PC. I've also tried several other programs. Same result.

RolandJS said:

Have you tried PowerISO?

First time I've heard of it. Thanks for your suggestion. I'll try it out. :)

This is a simple way to make a USB win 7 installation disk

To make it boot able as Legacy, open a CMD window as administrator and type:

diskpart (to enter diskpart)
list volume (to list volumes on the disk. Identify and take note of the USB disk volume number).
select volume n (replace n by the USB disk volume number from the previous cmd)
active
exit (to exit diskpart)
exit (to close the CMD window)

Now copy all files and folders from the DVD (or extract from the iso using 7zip) to the USB flash disk.

Windows 7 successfully installed! Thank you everyone!