Creating a bootable flash drive windows 7 cmd. Create a bootable USB drive

Considering that modern computers are increasingly used without DVD drives, and you need to install Windows now, a bootable Windows 7 flash drive will come in handy.

The USB flash drive has long since replaced the floppy drive. A USB flash drive as a storage medium has its advantages as a replacement for both CDs and DVDs. A USB drive is generally larger in capacity than disc media and, since it is more expensive, cannot (yet) be used as a replacement.

Still, there are reasons to choose a USB device over a DVD. Not only is it faster to copy data such as setup files from a USB drive, but during use the access times are also significantly faster. Thus, installing Windows 7 will be much faster from a USB flash drive than from a DVD, and of course, it is especially useful for PCs without a drive.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive Windows 7 - officially

We will show you how to create a bootable USB flash drive for Windows 7. You will need a USB flash drive of at least 4 GB of free space, and a copy of the Windows 7 installation disc. See: How to download an ISO image of Windows 7

To turn a USB flash drive into a bootable one, use the program offered by Microsoft - Windows 7 USB / DVD Download Tool. Download the installer from Microsoft.com following the basic steps to create a bootable Windows 7 USB stick. Once the tool is installed, run.

• Download Windows 7 USB / DVD Download Tool: https://archive.codeplex.com/?p\u003dwudt

The second step, to create and get a bootable USB flash drive for Windows 7, click on the Browse button and specify where the bootable flash drive will be written from. Next.

In the third step, make sure you are using the correct USB device. All files from the USB stick, move to a local drive before continuing. The tool will tell you about the detected data on the device.

Formatting will take place very quickly, while creating a bootable USB drive will take a little more (about 10 to 15 minutes).

After completing the process, you will receive a full bootable Windows 7 USB stick. Close the tool and use the USB stick to install Windows 7 as intended.

To make a bootable USB flash drive, you need to find and download the finished image, then format the USB flash drive and write the image using the UltraISO program.

Where to download the boot image

A few words what an image is. It is, as it were, an archive with all files, only without compression. It is much more convenient and faster to write such a single file than thousands of small files. In addition, the image also contains service records that help make the USB flash drive bootable.

The program has a free trial period. This is enough for recording a bootable USB flash drive.

Install and run the program as an administrator. To do this, right-click on the shortcut and select:

If you are asked for permission to make changes on this computer, then we agree. Now press "". The words "hard drive" shouldn't bother you, now your flash drive will become, like, a hard drive.

In the window, be sure to select your USB flash drive from the list and the recording method "USB-HDD +"

During the recording of the image, all data will be erased, so we will not be afraid and format the disk, moreover, this will increase the likelihood of loading. We press "Format" and in the window select a disk the size of your flash drive, but usually there is only it and is already selected by default.

What to look for:

1. FAT file system. If only NTFS is selected, then we format the first time in NTFS, then again, but this time FAT32. If you still can't choose, then leave it as it is.
2. Allocation unit size (cluster size): default or 4096 bytes.
3. The checkbox "Fast (clear the table of contents)" should be on.

Click "Start". Formatting is quick, but if it writes an error that the device is busy, then just close the files and folders opened from the flash drive. It may just ask for formatting permission, because the disk is being used by some program. If the error "Bad volume label" occurs, then in the "Volume label" field, leave only letters and numbers, or even delete everything from there. After the end of the process, close the formatting window and click "Save".

What to do if you have two logical drives

This occurs when a large disk is split into two logical partitions. Those. the system has two disks: the first is small, the second is large. In this case, it may be problematic to copy all the information to another location before formatting.

What to do? Actions depend solely on the image and its boot files, so I can't give universal recommendations. But, the description on torrent trackers often contains everything.

Let me explain why you need to do everything with the UltraISO program and select "USB-HDD +" in the recording method. The fact is that in this way the flash drive becomes, as it were, a hard disk in the eyes of the BIOS, and this is necessary because otherwise nothing will be loaded. Therefore, you need to transfer the data somewhere and format / overwrite everything. Or read the description for a specific distribution, there are simple options.

You can also try to write files first according to the recommendations from the distribution, for luck. Suddenly, before someone had already used the USB flash drive as a bootable one and formatted it as needed.

How to boot a computer from a self-bootable flash drive

I am devoted to this question. In short, after turning on the computer, you need to quickly press the F12 or F9 or F10 button. In general, it depends on the model. Thus, a menu should appear in which you need to select your flash drive.

You can also press F2 (+ Fn), F1, Esc, Enter and other buttons to get into the BIOS. There you can choose a boot device according to the description from the article at the link. Attention should be paid to the "UEFI / Legacy Boot" option. Here you need to select "Both" or "Legacy Only", in general, anything except "UEFI Only". Otherwise, it will not boot from the flash drive if the image was not UEFI-compatible, which is usually the case. Also set the "CSM Support" option to "Yes", this is useful if your hard disk is partitioned into GPT partitions.

Why you may need a bootable USB drive

Yes, for almost any reason when diagnosing and restoring a computer, laptop or Windows 7/8/10 operating system. For example:

• To be 100% cured of viruses
• Check the hard drive for errors
• Back up the system or restore it
• Fix Windows errors
• Delete non-removable
• Windows 7/10

And I also boot from a flash drive when something is buggy in order to exclude equipment breakdown, when I see that everything works from the flash drive as it should.

Why can't you do all this from your working Windows? And the thing is that Windows blocks access to many system files. And so it happens that you cannot delete a file or folder and nothing helps. Also with a backup, because you cannot even copy system files such as the registry and its user branches. True, there is shadow copying for this case, but still.

On an infected system, curing a virus can be a thankless task. Because a virus that is already in memory will block the antivirus and appear again and again.

It is also impossible to reliably check the disk for errors when the operating system is working with the disk, but it always does it, even when you are not doing anything.

The bootable USB flash drive usually has a portable version of Windows XP / 7/8/10, i.e. the same Windows on which you can run programs from the same flash drive. And the set of programs includes all the necessary, working, time-tested and then

Also, there are utilities for backup / recovery, diagnostics and treatment that work without starting Windows.

In this article I will tell you how to write an image to a USB flash drive (in this case, a Windows image) for the subsequent installation of the system on a computer. Nowadays, many people have laptops and netbooks where there is simply no optical drive, or there is no way to install windows from a disk, this is where the creation of a bootable windows 7 flash drive comes to the rescue. This article is primarily intended for these tasks.

We will write an image to a USB flash drive in two ways. The first method will be implemented using a very good ultra iso program, and the second using WinSetup From USB. We'll start by looking at the steps for working with ultra iso, since this method is less labor-intensive and the process of creating a bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive will be quite fast. The second method will remain for those who, for some reason, “did not work out” with the first option.

Method number 1

So let's go. First, download the program Ultra ISO... After the program has been downloaded, installed and launched (press the trial period, if there is no desire to buy), you can start a fairly simple process of writing Windows to a USB flash drive:

1. You must specify the path to the image that should be placed on your hard disk:
Click "File" \u003d\u003e Open (Fig. 1)

Fig. 1

Figure: 2

Figure: 3

Method number 2

This method will also tell you how to write windows to a USB flash drive. What is needed for this option:

1. A little free time;

2. Computer (with ironwhich supports booting from a USB flash drive);

3. The program for preparing a flash drive ( download);

4. Actually the flash drive itself (even an SD card will go);

5. The image of the operating system we want to install.

As an example, I will show how we will write an image of the operating system to a 4GB SD cardMicrosoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Immediately I want to draw your attention to the choice of the operating system. If your computer has less than 4GB of random access memory (RAM), then you should install the 32-bit (x86) version of the operating system, since the 64-bit version will simply clutter up the RAM with unnecessary processes.

We insert the flash drive into the USB port and format it to FAT32 or NTFS using Windows. To do this, go to My Computer, find a USB flash drive there and right-click on its icon. In the context menu, select the "Format ..." item. In the formatting window, select the FAT32 or NTFS file system (the latter will be better if a flash drive with a capacity of more than 4GB), and also select the cluster size "Standard cluster size" and click the "Start" button. Everything is shown in the picture:

Next, download a small program in which we will do all the operations we need. There are several programs of this type, but I chose WinSetupFromUSB, because it does not require installation, almost does not take up space ondisk and easy to use.

We launch the program. First, we need to select the device to which we will record the image. This is done in the drop-down menu at the top (if the flash drive is not displayed in this menu, click on the Refresh button). Next, we need to prepare the USB flash drive for recording the image, because if we just copy the image, it will be impossible to enter the system installer, because there is no boot sector. To create it, click on the Bootice button.

In the Bootice utility window that opens, press the Process MBR button, then look to see if Grub4Dos is ticked (if not, check it) and click on the Install / Config button. In the Config Grub for DOS window, click on the "Save to disk" button, the program will display a window that the boot record has been successfully written to the drive.

We return again to the Bootice utility window, where we press the "Process PBR" button and do everything the same, without changing anything in the last window, press OK.

That's it, now we just have to write the image to the USB flash drive, this is done in the main window of the program, which we saw immediately at startup. It is necessary to put the necessary checkbox in it - if you are going to install Windows XP, then this is the first checkbox, if Vista or Seven - the second. Next, click on the "..." button on the other side of the checkmark and set the path where our unpacked image is stored on the hard disk, or simply mounted to a virtual drive using DaemonTools or Alcohol. Press the "GO" button and wait until the process is over.

Upon completion, the program will display the message "Job Done!" Everyone, dear friends, you can reboot and start installing the operating system.

Also, I advise you to read the article regarding

Hello!

To install Windows on a modern computer or laptop, an ordinary USB flash drive is increasingly used, rather than a CD / DVD with an OS. A USB storage device has many advantages over a disk: faster installation, smaller size and the ability to use even on PCs that do not have a floppy drive.

If you just take a disk with an operating system and copy all the data to a USB flash drive, it won't become an installation one.

I would like to consider several ways to create bootable media with different versions of Windows (by the way, if you are interested in the question of a multiboot drive, you can familiarize yourself with this :).

What is required

1. Utilities for writing a USB flash drive. Which one to use depends on which version of the operating system you decide to use. Popular utilities: ULTRA ISO, Daemon Tools, WinSetupFromUSB.
2. USB drive, preferably 4 GB or more. For Windows XP, a smaller one is also suitable, but for Windows 7+, less than 4 GB will definitely not be used.
3. An ISO installation image with the OS version you need. You can make such an image yourself from the installation disc or download it (for example, you can download the new Windows 10 from the Microsoft website at the link: microsoft.com/ru-ru/software-download/windows10).
4. Free time - 5-10 minutes.

Creating a bootable Windows USB stick

So let's move on to ways of creating and recording media with an operating system. The methods are very simple, you can master them very quickly.

Universal method for all versions

Why universal? Because it can be used to create a bootable USB drive with any version of Windows (except XP and below). However, you can try to burn the medium in this way and with XP - only it does not work for everyone, the chances are 50/50 ...

It is also important to note that when installing the OS from a USB drive, you do not need to use USB 3.0 (this high speed port is marked in blue).

To burn an ISO image, you need one utility - Ultra ISO (by the way, it is very popular and many probably already have it on a computer).

By the way, for those who want to burn an installation USB flash drive with version 10, this note may be very useful: (the article tells about one cool utility Rufus, which creates bootable media several times faster than analog programs).

Step by step actions

Download the Ultra ISO program from the official website: ezbsystems.com/ultraiso. Let's start the process right away.

If you are unable to create bootable media using the ULTRA ISO program, try the following utility from this article (see below).

Creating an image of Windows 7/8

For this method, you can use the recommended Micrisoft utility - Windows 7 USB / DVD download tool (link to the official website: microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool).

However, I still prefer to use the first method (via ULTRA ISO) - because there is one drawback with this utility: it can not always write an image of Windows 7 to a 4 GB USB drive. If you use an 8GB stick, that's even better.

Let's take a look at the steps.

Bootable media with Windows XP

To create an installation USB drive with XP, we need two utilities at once: Daemon Tools + WinSetupFromUSB (I have provided links to them in

It is not uncommon for the Windows operating system to crash. Often, many cannot even establish the cause of the failure. It could be a virus downloaded along with a useful program, or the deletion of a vital file. Of course, this file can be restored, but what if you simply do not have an installation disk at hand or you are unable to restore the system? The situation can be complicated by the fact that you need a computer or files from it (documents for studies or work, even the same photographs) here and now. What to do then? Option one is to have a bootable USB flash drive with you, and now we will figure out how to make it. A bootable flash drive is a way to boot the operating system from removable media, that is, you will not be left without a computer. Of the minuses, limited functionality should be noted, but on the other hand, you can copy all the necessary files and will not worry that something will happen to them when you reinstall the OS.

Create bootable media using the command line

Even a person who does not understand anything about computers can create a bootable USB flash drive, for this he only needs a complete instruction. As a matter of fact, it was for you that we wrote it. Let's start with the hardest part - through the command line. From the pros: you don't have to download additional software for this, but you have to tinker a little more. On the other hand, you will finally learn what the command line is and what it is. So, let's begin:

If you want to learn more about the commands presented in the fourth paragraph, this information will be useful to you:

In any case, it will not be superfluous.

How to create a bootable USB flash drive using UltraISO

We finished with the most difficult method, we propose to go to a simple one - for this you will have to use third-party software, namely the UltraISO program. From its name you can already understand that it works with disk images in the .iso format. It is in this format that images of operating systems are most often distributed - starting with the old Windows XP and ending with the modern "Ten".

Through the program, you can create, burn and mount disk images. Moreover, as you understood, it perfectly copes with another purpose - with the creation of bootable flash drives, moreover, rather quickly and without unnecessary gestures from the user:


As you can see, everything is much simpler here - you don't need to enter any commands, just a few mouse clicks are enough. If this method does not suit you for one reason or another, you can always go back to the first or go to the third - use the official utility from Microsoft, designed exclusively for creating external bootable media.

How to make a bootable USB stick with Windows USB / DVD Download Tool

If you consider the first method too lengthy and complicated, and you don’t trust the second because of participation in the creation of a bootable USB flash drive by a third-party program, then the third one is clearly created for you:

Now you understand that nothing is impossible in any of the above methods. Choose the one that you like the most, create a bootable USB flash drive and, finally, do not worry that you will be left without a computer when you need it so much. Remember that to boot from a flash drive, you must set the correct settings in the BIOS - they are set differently for each motherboard and laptop model.