Bhargav's IT Playground » Windows 7

How to prepare USB media for Windows 7 installation

Bhargav — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:47:48 +0000

I have blogged earlier about creating a USB media for Windows 7 Installation. I recently found out, there is a better way!

Microsoft Store guys have Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool which makes creating USB media for installation easy.

The first step is to download and install the tool.

Once you do that, launch the tool and select source ISO file. Click next:

Next, select “USB Device” in media type:

In Step 3, select appropriate USB device from the list and click “Begin Copying”. Make sure your USB drive is empty or you have back up of data contained on the USB device:

Confirm erase operation. When you click “Erase USB Device”, it will format the device before copying the files to it. You should see the progress window while it copies the files to USB device for you:

Once the process completes, remove the USB, insert it on the computer where you need to install Windows 7 and start the computer. Make sure your BIOS can boot from USB devices and you select appropriate USB device that contains installation files when it boots.

You can find more details about this tool at Microsoft Store web site.

This process should work for Windows Server 2008 R2 as well.

Enjoy!

Install Windows 7 from Bootable USB Drive

Bhargav — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:24:08 +0000

If you ever wondered how can you make your Windows 7 installation process faster or more convenient (in my case convenient as I don’t have a DVD drive in my laptop, I replaced it with extra HDD), you will be happy to know that it is possible to install Windows 7 from a bootable USB key.

Cesar has documented the process here.

I would like to add to the process documented above. In my experience, I did not have to do Step 1 mentioned above. I decided to skip it and see how it worked. I had a working USB key so I just removed all contents and performed Steps 2, 3 and 4.

I have been using this process since release of Windows 7 Beta so I had to do step 2 only once. Every time I got new build, I just removed all files and replaced from new DVD ISO.

Also, since I don’t have DVD drive, you may be wondering how did I copy files from DVD to USB. Well, I just mounted the ISO using Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive. There are many tools available to mount ISO files. Feel free to use one that best suits your needs. I settled on Virtual CloneDrive as it was the only one that worked on Windows 7 x64.

If you have installed Windows 7 Beta or RC, it’s time to upgrade to RTM. If not, what are you waiting for?