How To Make Bootable USB

Having a bootable USB is very essential, especiallyif you are a Netbook user. Using bootable USB to install an operatingsystem (OS) not only makes the installation faster, but also saves aDVD.

Creating or using an USB drive to install Windows operating systems is very easy if you follow the below mentioned steps.

If you are planning to use bootable USB to install Windows 7 or Vista please refer our guides:

Install Windows 7/Vista using bootable USB guide

And also, you can refer install Windows 7 on Acer Aspire One guide

Coming back to bootable USB guide, here we assume that you are using either Vista or Windows 7 to create a bootable USB.

1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to thesystem and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to formatthe USB to make it as bootable.

2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in 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.

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 showthe disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive diskno is Disk 1.

4. In this step you need to enter all the belowcommands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are selfexplanatory, 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.

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.

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)

7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.

You are done with your bootable USB. You can now usethis bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USBboot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).

Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.

  Tags: Bootable USB, USB Bootable