How To Install Windows 7 From Usb Pen Drive

Physical DVD drives are becoming a thing of the past equally the size of our PCs continue compress and new form factors are emerging. Microsoft distributes Windows 7 and Windows 8 on physical discs or images of DVDs chosen ISO files that are typically burned to physical media. This has go problem as a number of laptops and tablet PCs no longer ship with DVD drives. The best fashion to install Windows on these devices is to use a USB wink drive that contains the Windows installation files. As an actress benefit, modern USB flash drives are typically much faster than DVDs resulting in a quick install.

Earlier nosotros go started you will need:

Windows seven or Windows 8 ISO file and WinRAR or a burned DVD with the install source files
4 GB USB flash drive for Windows seven. You lot may need a 8 GB USB wink drive for some Windows 8 images.

Option one - The Manual Method

i. Preparing the USB wink drive

Let'south get started. Offset we need to format the USB flash bulldoze to erase any existing data on the drive. Click on the First Button so Calculator to bring up your drives.

Next, right click on the removable USB flash bulldoze and select Format.

Click Start and the USB flash drive will be formatted.

2. Preparing the source files

Now it is time to extract the setup from a Windows 7/eight ISO paradigm file. If you lot take a physical Windows install DVD and so skip to pace 3.

To extract the files from the ISO file you will need WinRAR. If you do non already have WinRAR download and install that now.

Once y'all have WinRAR installed navigate to the ISO file in explorer and right click on the file and select the bottom Extract to <folder name> choice.

The ISO file will now exist extracted to a sub-folder with the same name as the ISO file. This can take a few minutes to complete.

3. Copying source files to USB flash bulldoze

The final step is to copy the install source onto the USB wink drive in a way that volition allow the Windows vii/8 install to boot upwards. The trick here is to use XCopy. Depending on where your source files are located in that location are two different methods to copy the files onto the flash drive.

Using extracted source files

Open up control prompt and navigate to the directory you extracted the source files from the ISO file with the CD command. Then, run XCOPY *.* J: /east and hit Enter to start the copy. Be sure to supervene upon J with the bulldoze alphabetic character of your USB flash drive.

Using a physical Windows install DVD

The instructions are slightly different when using a physical DVD. Open up command prompt and blazon XCOPY D: J: /e and hit Enter. Supercede D with the drive letter of the alphabet of your CD-ROM drive and supercede J with the drive letter of your USB flash drive.

v. Installing Windows seven/8 from the USB flash bulldoze

Once the file copy has completed you lot are ready to plug the USB flash drive into your figurer. Turn it on and hit the keyboard shortcut to bring upward the boot card for your model. Typically it is F12 or F1. After yous select your USB flash drive the Windows seven/8 installation should begin to load. At this point, installing Windows is the same as on a normal laptop or a desktop.

Option ii - Automatic Method

Microsoft at present has a gratuitous utility that volition automatically make a bootable USB wink drive from a Windows vii/8 ISO image file. Simply download the tool, specify the location of your ISO file and the wizard will do everything for you.