How to Install Windows 7 From USB Drive without Windows 7 ISO DVD

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Install Windows 7 from USB Flash Drive

We have published article on How to install Windows 7 on Vmware Player. That guide is useful if you want to make yourself free from need of dual boot. Now here is another scenario what if you don’t have DVD-ROM and you are running Windows XP, you might have guessed in this case we can’t install windows 7.

Since Windows 7 ISO size is around 2.24 GB so its obvious that you will need to burn windows 7 iso on DVD and another issue is you can’t start windows 7 installation by mounting ISO file on windows XP as Windows XP upgrade to windows 7 is not allowed. In such situation installing windows 7 from USB pen drive is feasible solution.

Here is small guide on how to install windows 7 from USB flash drive or USB pen Drive for Windows XP users.

How to Install Windows 7 from USB Flash Drive

Requirement:

USB Pen Drive (Min 4 GB)

Windows 7 ISO (32 bit or 64 bit)

MBRwiz Download and Extract it on your hard drive (Diskpart utility for Windows XP doesn’t detect USB drive as Disk hence we need to use this free utility to make bootable USB drive).

1. Connect your USB Flash Drive to your computer Format USB drive

2. To Format USB Flash Drive Go to My Computer -> Right click on USB drive and select Format from context menu.

Format USB Drive

3. Now go to Start Menu->run->cmd (Open Command Prompt) and Type following command

convert i: /fs:ntfs (Where “I” is your USB drive latter)

Convert USB Flash Drive FAT32 to NTFS

4. Mount Windows 7 iso as drive (You can use Freeware MagicDisc download from here).

5. Type Start->run->cmd

Now dir to directory where you have extracted MBRWiz and run following commands

mbrwiz /list (note down disk number of your USB Pen drive)

mbrwiz /disk=X /active=X (X is Disk Number of your USB Drive)

exit

MBRWiz

6. Now open another command window and type following command

J: (Drive letter of Windows 7 iso mounted with demon tool)

CD boot

bootsect /nt60 Y: (Y is drive latter of your USB drive )

Update BOOTMGR for USB Pen Drive

7. Now copy all files from drive where you have mount Windows 7 iso

8. Now reboot your computer and press F9 to get your BIOS screen and select USB drive as your boot drive.

9. If every thing goes fine, Your Windows 7 Installation should start from your USB drive.

Source: Bwana

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Reader Comments

I attempeted to mount the .iso file using the magic disc download in the directions. and upon attempting to mount, windows 7 asked to start install. but that would make a dual boot right? also I was able to follow up to step 4. and wasn’t able to mount the .iso file. and couldn’t even get to step 5.the windows 7 is for a spare partition hard drive. can I simply install to the other drive? my current OS is on the C drive, and the spare is a D drive. or would it still be a dual boot? Thank You

Written By Ryan
on January 14th, 2009

there’s a mistake in section 5:

mbrwiz /disk=X /active=X (X is Disk Number of your USB Drive)

should be:

mbrwiz /disk=X /active=1 (X is Disk Number of your USB Drive)

the active argument gets 1 or 0.

another issue i stumbled with - bootsect.
i couldn’t run the bootsect from /boot/ on the DVD.
you can download the file from:
http://www.2shared.com/file/2585881/5ad9ef68/bootsect.html

thanks for the tutorial - will soon try installing.

Written By Tzafrir
on January 15th, 2009

Thank you! Worked like a charm. I was having issues installing this via DVD as certain files were ‘allegedly missing’ and this ran without a hiccup.

Written By Isaac
on January 15th, 2009

I’ve been trying this procedure but every time I go to start the boot from the USB stick, my system just hangs with a flashing cursor. I got no other errors through the whole process, just can’t seem to get the installer started. Can any offer some help?

Written By Stephen
on January 15th, 2009

Worked like a charm. Thanks for the post!!

Written By Bill
on January 16th, 2009

so I figured out how to install Win 7. I installed onto my partitioned D drive and it worked like a charm. no .iso mounting needed. I’ve spent about 2 hours checking out and installing codecs and drivers.upon trying one of the games, windows 7 offeres to test your machine. and afterwards seemed to mock my graphics card. so to shut it up, I installed the latest nvidia driver from my external hard drive,cause I don’t use internet at home, get plenty of internet use at work.(which the driver works on xp) and now I some how broke windows 7 beta. it continues to go to a blue screen and reboots. I had to reformat my D drive and now here I sit, waiting on a fresh install of windows 7

Written By Ryan
on January 16th, 2009

when i typed in the command “bootsect/nt60 I:” it said that the boot code may be unreliable because it was denied access in the process. long story short i finished all the steps and rebooted but he problem was it would go to my normal boot screen when i booted from the USB pen drive. i need some help getting around this error and im wondering if it would have anythibg to do with the fact that i am useing an XP computer. its kinda annoyin because it worked for everyone else

Written By Keith
on January 16th, 2009

never mind dude i figured out what the problem was. it isnt to clear in these instructions that the drive your are formatting cant be the source of the virtual drive. i finally figures out that the virtual drive is only there for the formatting alone and has to be ended as soon as the flash drive is formatted. thanks a million for the tutorial anyhow.

Written By Keith
on January 16th, 2009

[...] Windows XP [...]

on January 17th, 2009

Yeah, I’m pretty sure this can be done without cmd. Way to complicate things.

Written By joel
on January 18th, 2009

I get my USB drive to boot….but it always says missing operating system even though I did copy the files from the mounted drive to the flash drive.

Any ideas?

Written By Frank
on January 18th, 2009

(follows above post)

Also, I tried it on another machine and it worked. So no problem with the USB drive itself. There is an option in my BIOS (on the computer on which I want to install windows 7) for USB booting. I followed your guide to the letter.

Written By Frank
on January 18th, 2009

This is for dual booting right

Written By Raphael
on January 18th, 2009

Is it possible to do this with an external HDD? I don’t have a Flash that big :(

Or isn’t there a way to copy the setup files to another drive and use a boot disk to sorta DOS it like i used to do with Win98 when my cd drive broke? I really wanna get this working on my old laptop but its over 3 years old and the DVD drive refuses to read. Everything else is good for the install though.

Or can i make another partition, copy the set up files there and boot that partition?

Written By GigiAUT
on January 18th, 2009

I manage to get to the point of putting it into my Acer Aspire F12 then it comes with an error it doesnt like file boot.bcd. I have linux on the Acer One

any ideas?

Regards

Tony

Written By tony
on January 19th, 2009

well I just thought I would add this into the post I was able to keep the windows 7 iso on another pc and share it over the network and mount it that way and install the 32 bit so none of this is needed under windows xp pro this will not work for 64 bit. also you can do an upgrade install or a clean install if you are running a 64 bit os it may work for the 64 but have not been able to try that yet

any questions just ask

Written By chris
on January 21st, 2009

also the command bootsect /nt60 Y: i could only get to work for 32 bit

Written By chris
on January 21st, 2009

how do you dir to directory??

Written By josh
on January 21st, 2009

@ Chris, how did you manage to set up your computer that way? I looking around for a guide how to do it but they all have XP which has the i386 folder and Win7 doesnt. Plus its taking me ages to go through the thing.

Written By GigiAUT
on January 21st, 2009

Ummm…..so guys….which is the latest and working?
I tried both, but didn’t work. My pendrives able to boot, I’ve tried these with HP boot utility, and a win98 startup disk and could boot, but I can’t install windows 7 with the mentioned methods.

Written By temp74
on January 22nd, 2009

I tried this with the 64bit version. After following all the directions and rebooting, I got:

An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.

File: \Boot\BCD

Written By curt
on January 23rd, 2009

Worked for me. Had to use the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (not the softpaq exe distributed one, but the hpflash.zip one) to format the drive as bootable, as mbrwiz kept throwing errors when I would try to set the usb partition as active. Used an ME boot floppy for the DOS source, then continued on from your convert step, works like a bootable usb Windows 7 32-bit install package should!

Written By Moritz
on January 23rd, 2009

Yup…now it works. The thing is…..I have windows 7 written on cd, had to make an iso file, and then mount it, and then it worked.
If I did it from the cd, it didn’t work…

Written By temp74
on January 23rd, 2009

Tried and worked great!!!

Will this method work with other versions of windows like XP, Vista, ect…

Written By Chad
on January 24th, 2009

Can you not just format as NTFS in step 2 and then you wouldn’t need step 3?

Written By Wayne
on January 25th, 2009

[...] you have installed Windows 7 then you might know how much different it is from vista even though windows 7 is based on Vista [...]

on January 26th, 2009

bootsect /nt60 Y:

The bootsect application for the 64 bit version is a 64 bit application which will not run under 32 bits (in my case) Vista. This seams to mean that you can only prepare a USB drive with Windows 7 64 bit from a 64 bit OS? Any work arounds?

Written By Erik Vermeulen
on January 26th, 2009

Does anyone know how I do this from Linux/Mac? We don’t all have windows but would quite like to give the new one a spin.

Written By Mark
on January 27th, 2009

@Erik - can you not also download the 32 bit version and then mount the ISO file for the sole purpose of running bootsect? There is also a link posted to a bootsect file in the second comment to this blog entry.

Written By Wayne
on January 27th, 2009

@Wayne - I tried this (great idea by the way) but after I try to boot from USB all I get is a blinking cursor. I may burn the 64 bit ISO on a DVD after all.

Written By Erik Vermeulen
on January 27th, 2009

i am using windows xp Professional and downloaded windows 7 i have tried all above procedure to make a bootable to my 4 GB USB Flash but i was unable to make it and got error ‘bootsect’ is not recognized as operable program or batch file. so tell me that how i will install win 7 one thing more i dont have any DVD rom or DVD-R please help.

Regrads

Irfan Soomro

Written By Irfan Jugnu
on January 27th, 2009

@Irfan Jugnu - Are you trying to install Windows 7 x64? The error you get seems to be caused by running the 64 bit bootsect from a 32 bit version of Windows.

Written By Erik Vermeulen
on January 28th, 2009

@Wayne - I gave it one more try. I figured out that it may be required to run the 64 bit version of bootsect so I planned to following:

1. Download VMWare Server (it’s free)
2. Mount the 64 bit ISO in a virtual machine
3. Install Windows 7 x64 within a VM
4. Add a virtual USB controller to the virtual machine
5. Prepare the USB stick as described in this article
6. Install Win7 from the USB stick for real :)

Using VMWare Server 1.08, step 4 doesn’t work.
I can choose from 3 USB devices but neither can be ‘mounted’. Ejecting or unmounting in the host OS (safely remove device in windows) Doesn’t help. VMWare’s log keeps saying: USBG: Removing stale connect request.

Written By Erik Vermeulen
on January 28th, 2009

Hi ERIK
wel i am trying to install win 7 x64 plz support full installation method over flash usb 4GB.
Thanks

Written By Irfan Jugnu
on January 31st, 2009

Tony,

how did you install from a file share? Did you just copy over the files and did a upgrade of WinXP32? OR did you do some form of network booting?

Written By Atle Dale
on January 31st, 2009

Chris,

the question above this post was to you….I saw the wrong name.

Written By Atle Dale
on January 31st, 2009

[...] How to Install Windows 7 From USB Drive on XP [...]

on February 1st, 2009

i faced problem in the beginnig: ” convert” is not recognized as an internal or external command… ” i m using win xp, i couldnt understand.. what is the problem.. does anyone have any idea? some prompt commands are not recognized.. as ” convert’ select’, etc…

Written By iflayev
on February 12th, 2009

Thank You!!!

Written By Ethan
on February 13th, 2009

I used the process given above, tweaked up a bit to install Windows Vista on my Laptop, since my DVD RW drive wasn’t working.

Thanks. You saved me quite a bit of time, since the only other process I knew that would work was a network boot installation, which sucks to set up.

Written By Donald Severn
on February 22nd, 2009

[...] I had a spare external drive sitting around, and I more-or-less followed these instructions for getting the installer running from there instead of the DVD. Setup is still running; stay tuned [...]

on February 28th, 2009

thanks for your guide!
i am running xp x64 (64 bit), and want to install win7 (32 bit) … and all my bootings ended with an “missing operation system”
so i tried to somehow run bootsect in 31 bit mode .. or something like that … i wasnt really sure what i did :)

then i found a guide using the ISOs bootsect like this
“bootsect /nt60 X: /mbr” (where X is the usbs drive letter)

now it works! :)

Written By demianovics
on March 3rd, 2009

I had a problem with this step

“Now dir to directory where you have extracted MBRWiz and run following commands”

But this step is unnecccary if you place the MBRwiz.exe in the folder that is in the title bar of your cmd window. It should be C:\Windows\System32

Written By Tom
on March 3rd, 2009

Hi, I was also having the same problem as u did. Solution? I exited windows setup and started it all again.^^ Simple.

Written By zipper
on March 17th, 2009

Thank you so much! This is the only site (that i found) that did not have diskpart in it. I have been trying to find a way to make dispart detect my usb, but never mind, problem solved!

Written By Christian
on March 21st, 2009

[...] original article can be found here. It has some issues, and I corrected them and updated few other [...]

on March 31st, 2009

Can anyone help me out? I followed the directions exactly and copied over the iso to usb and when I boot it from my other laptop it says that “invalid or broken partition”? Any ideas?

Written By Rob
on April 12th, 2009

[...] want install Ubuntu on USB flash drive and create bootable USB key but don’t k0nw how to do it then here is handy utility uSbuntu Live Creator 1.5 for this [...]

on April 18th, 2009

I had issues getting the iso to boot from my brand new Cruzer 8Gb. The screen would come up with a blinking cusrsor in the corner and that’s it.
Now it’s working.
Although the drive is not recognized as U3, I ran the U3 uninstaller. This will wipe the USB stick, but for some reason it is now working like a charm.
U3 Uninstaller: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=391

Written By Ruud
on April 24th, 2009

i cannot boot from USB !
it’s display No partition boot in table.
i need help pls.

Written By samnang
on April 30th, 2009

Thanks it worked like a charm.

Written By Hassan
on April 30th, 2009

[...] anyway to install it off a usb stick?? sorry if wrong post but i dont have any spare dvds Follow this and you are set to go . Did this for my brother and works perfectly. [...]

on May 1st, 2009

[...] tired of burning perfectly good DVDs repeatedly for Windows 7 beta testing. Instead, I decided to follow these excellent instructions and copy the contents of the ISO image onto a USB stick and boot from [...]

on May 3rd, 2009

I carried out ur instructions to the letter and succeeded in creating a bootable flash drive. But i’m still not getting the option to boot from usb in my BIOS. I have a Dell Optiplex GX260 version A02. Can someone please help me out?

Written By Ebrahim
on May 4th, 2009

Works great! Thank you so much!

Written By Abdullah A.
on May 4th, 2009

I’m trying to install RC1, but I can’t get MBRWiz to work. When I try to list the drives (step 5) I get error 23: - no disk identified, or insufficient user priviledges.
Is there another way to do this?

Written By matt
on May 5th, 2009

For all of you who cannot get your thumb drive to even boot…(maybe I did something wrong)…but you can unhide system files and copy over the “boot.ini” “NTDETECT.COM” and “ntldr” from the root of your HDD to the root of your thumb.

The error I was getting previous to this solution was something along the lines of Failed to load or error loading operating system.

Hope that helps anyone!

Written By Duckworth
on May 7th, 2009

Also in addition to the above post ^^^^

I am about to try to run Windows 7 with 512 mb of memory, I’ll let you all know how that turns out.

Written By Duckworth
on May 7th, 2009

@Duckworth
I am running Win7 Beta at home with 3/4 GB RAM so I think you’ll be okay with just a 1/2 GB and the new RC states it needs a minimum of 1GB to run.

Written By Iain
on May 7th, 2009

2gb? Who needs it. 512mb works fine.

Written By Duckworth
on May 7th, 2009

All Step Complete.
After Select BIOS Boot USB
Show Message Missing Operating System.
How To ?

Written By lxlut
on May 7th, 2009

I’m building Win 7 32 bit Release Candidate on XP Pro SP3 32 bit, and also from a 64bit Vista SP1. I get “error loading operating system” when trying to boot from USB thumb on 2 different computers. When on XP I tried copying boot.ini” “NTDETECT.COM” and “ntldr” as things and stuff suggested, but that didn’t help.

Written By pcrequest
on May 8th, 2009

if you end up with the blank screen with a blinking “_” you need to run this command from a command prompt:

“bootsect /nt60 X: /mbr” (where X is the usbs drive letter)

That will fix you error reboot and you should be installing Windows 7!

Written By Casey
on May 8th, 2009

“For all of you who cannot get your thumb drive to even boot…(maybe I did something wrong)…but you can unhide system files and copy over the “boot.ini” “NTDETECT.COM” and “ntldr” from the root of your HDD to the root of your thumb.

The error I was getting previous to this solution was something along the lines of Failed to load or error loading operating system.

Hope that helps anyone!”

don’t really get this, can you explain any better?
i can’t seem to boot it.. i get a blinking -

Written By Tiago
on May 9th, 2009

[...] many links like: Creating Bootable Vista / Windows 7 USB Flash Drive at Kevin’s Blog and How to Install Windows 7 From USB Drive without Windows 7 ISO DVD The second link (only one I tried) worked for me the first [...]

on May 9th, 2009

Hey guys i did the boot usb key on a data traveler 8gig! all work boot and start but im getting error cant load clfs.sys file couldnt find….. i got file. i can copy it.. i just dont know where to put it in my usbkey to fix it! any1 can help me plz?

Written By giz
on May 10th, 2009

for those that diskpart won’t recognize your usb, it’s about “flipping the removable bit”. LEXAR brand drives have an executable app that works on their own drives, and a few others. for all other usb’s it can be done in notepad and put in registry. then usb’s show up with “local drives” instead of showing up with cd drives @ the bottom. GUARANTEED.sometimes you can go to properties of usb drive ie… “policies” and click on optimize for performance, not quick removal and that works, sometimes. you can google “flipping the removable bit” and find the info since i don’t have it in front of my face at this time.btw-i boot WIN_se7en off a 2G/B lexar 360 jump drive (my iso is only 1.43G/B’s, thanks to vlite
WIN7 release 7127
Written by Michael

Written By michael dupuy
on May 24th, 2009

I confirm Tzafrir’s post - mbrwiz /disk=X /active=X

active argument as to be indeed 1, not the drive number. My usb stick was number 6 and 6 was not a valid argument for Active. After I set it to 1, it was activated successfully.

Written By Karel
on May 25th, 2009

I’m getting this one when trying to boot :”Invalid or damaged bootable Partition”.

Any Ideas please?

Written By Alain
on May 26th, 2009

tried above and yes it works, however any body tried for 64 bit iso? i have vista 32 bit and i need to install windows 7 64 bit from a usb drive. Am i asking too much?

Written By richard
on May 27th, 2009

[...] FolBlog, ma non sono riuscito perche’ non partivo da Vista. Se avete un Xp sottomano invece, potete seguire questa guida per mettere la vostra ISO di Windows 7 su Usb e installarlo da [...]

on June 1st, 2009

I have recently tried to use this method and i have done everything correct so far. I set my flash drive to active and then rechecked to make sure it was active with the mbrwiz/list command and it is active. I then proceed to the next step
J: (Drive letter of Windows 7 iso mounted with demon tool)

CD boot

bootsect /nt60 Y: (Y is drive latter of your USB drive )
and when i do this the drive is no longer active!!!! MAKING ME MAD
I then copied all the files over to the flash drive and tried booting and no luck. I then reactivated the drive and tried again with no luck.
for some reason my flash drive will not stay active
HELP PLEASE

Written By Justin
on June 4th, 2009

ok i fixed my firt problem. Now i have another. I had to reformat the flash drive with the suggested hpflash program. After i did that i followed the rest of the steps. Now windows begins to boot from the flash drive and it says loading windows files with a status bar on the bottom. Once it finishes loading the files it gets an error and says an unexpected error has occured with a code 0xc0000098. HELP

Written By Justin
on June 4th, 2009

bootsect from W7×32 .iso will only run from x32 bit system.
bootsect from W7×64 .iso will only run from x64 bit system.

To prepare W7 x64 from a x32bit system:
1) download BOTH W7×64 and W7×32.
2) Mount your W7×32 .iso.
3) run bootsect /nt60 Y: (Y is drive latter of your USB drive ) from W7×32 .iso, to prepare your USB key.
4) Now unmount W7×32 and mount W7×64 .iso
5) Extract W7×64 to the USB key.
6) Boot from USB.
Bootsec will prepare USB the same way, regardless of x(bits).

Written By Sammer
on June 12th, 2009

I also used bootsec from WindowsServer 2008 x32 to prepare my USB drive.
Then I extract W7×64 .iso contents to the USB.

Written By sammer
on June 12th, 2009

work perfectly for me .. :)

Written By James
on June 16th, 2009

I had a problem booting from USB, but the command “bootsect /nt60 X: /mbr” fix it… Thanks to all…

Written By JuanZapata
on June 29th, 2009

Thanks to the post above by (James) that sorted my problem out :)

Written By Michael
on July 3rd, 2009

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