Installing Windows from a DVD is getting older because one need to buy Windows DVD from physical or online store which takes time and may cost you extra bucks going to physical store and online store takes time to deliver the product, although if you tries to create bootable CD/DVD then you need to have blank dvd which also cost few bucks, lets say you need to install windows and you don’t have blank dvd right away, to overcome this problem and make windows installation much easier here comes windows installation using a Flash Drive, probably every computer owner owns a flash drive which make it easier to install any version of Windows on your computer. There are many software and tools available to make flash drive bootable including Microsoft Official USB Installer, many of such tools has limitation and takes much time to format and write windows files into flash drive some tools also cost money.
So here is simple way by which you can turn your flash drive into bootable media to install any version of windows like XP, 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 preview, all you need to have a flash drive with storage capacity of 4-8 GB, 4 GB for Windows XP, 7, 8 and 8 GB for windows 8.1 and 10 Preview, and the downloaded iso file of windows.
Steps to make flash drive bootable using command prompt (cmd)
1. Insert your Flash Drive and go to start, Search for CMD.
2. Right Click on it and Run as Administrator.
3. Once command prompt is open, type diskpart and hit enter. It will enter into disk partition management mode.
4. Type list disk and hit enter, here you can see all the disk into your computer, it doesn’t show disk partitions but list of connected disk to your computer.
5. After you get list of disk, recognize your flash drive by its size, here mine is 14 GB which is Disk 2, now lets select flash drive by typing select disk disk no. eg select disk 2 and hit enter.
6. Once Flash drive is selected type clean and hit enter, this command will erase everything from flash drive so make sure it does not contain your important files.
7. Now you need to make your flash drive as primary partition to do so type create partition primary and hit enter.
8. Once it is primary partition we need to make it active drive to do so type active and hit enter on your keyboard.
9. Now you have to format your flash drive, type format fs=fat32 quick and hit enter, this command will format flash drive in quick mode.
10. Once flash drive is formatted you may not see it in My Computer to get it back you need to assign a literal to it, type assign and hit enter.
All done you just made your flash drive bootable , close this command prompt by typing exit and hit Enter.
Install Windows Using this bootable flash drive
1. Now you need to copy windows files from computer to flash drive if you have .iso file of windows then extract it using win rar.
2. After extracting windows files copy all files and paste them to Flash drive.
After transferring windows files to flash drive you are ready to install windows on any computer using this flash drive, remove and re-insert flash disk and it will get windows setup icon which confirms that it is bootable media now.
Watch this video tutorial to make flash drive bootable
which has transfer speed up to 225 MB/s, after making flash drive bootable you can also keep you data along with windows files which has no effect on windows installation.
Great instructions to make a flash drive boot-able, even for a non geek like me.
Thank you
Thanks Sandeep,
But I couldn’t get to step 5 because when i typed the command “list disk,” my flash drive wasn’t included in the list.
What should i do?
Yaah thats the same problem I also encounter I typed list disk and my glash didnt appear on the list