Creating a bootable USB drive (Windows)
Like me, do you only have a really old USB DVD drive to install Windows Server on your servers? Would you rather have a faster way to install Windows 7 on your desktops? Here you go!
- Create an NTFS formatted Primary partition on your drive at least 4GB in size and assign it a drive letter
- Mark the partition active
- Next insert your Windows7/Vista DVD into the optical drive and check the drive letter of the DVD drive. I will assume that your DVD drive letter is “D” and USB drive letter is “H”
- Open a Command prompt (Start… Run… “cmd”… “Run as Administrator”)
- Type d:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 h: (where d: is your DVD drive and h: is your USB drive)
- You will then see the message “Successfully updated NTFS filesystem bootcode.”
- Copy the DVD to the USB drive.
- Be sure to invoke the boot manager when you boot the machine you’ll be installing windows to.
