Install Windows Vista from a bootable USB storage device
Posted 10-26-2007 at 02:25 AM by bios
If you are having problems booting from DVD, or simply want to speed up installation of Windows Vista, there is a way to install Windows Vista using a USB flash drive, or potentially, even a SD memory card.
You should have at least a 2.5GB to 3GB capacity on the USB drive. Its very unusual to see a drive with 3GB capacity sold, so you may want to buy a 4GB with a fast transfer rate.
Installing from a USB device offers the benefit of a faster installation, since DVD-ROM read speeds are significantly slower than USB 2.0, which, at the time of this writing, can reach something close to 20-25 megabytes per second.
What this involves is not only formatting the USB drive to use the FAT32 filesystem, but also copying the entire contents of the Windows Vista DVD-ROM to the USB thumbdrive itself.
INSTRUCTIONS:
STEP 1. Make sure your BIOS is capable of booting from USB
Most new computers are 100% capable of booting from USB device. Sometimes the option is disabled in the computer's BIOS. A more common situation is that when you start up the computer you may have an option to hit F12 to start a Boot Menu, which lets you pick what to boot from. Check to make sure you can in fact boot from USB by trying to access this menu or accessing your BIOS settings.
(Instructions on how to do this should be in your computer's manual or motherboard manual).
STEP 2. Make sure your USB drive partition is set to Primary.
Disks are assigned space using partitions. It is very unlikely that you will need to re-partition or change the partition of the USB drive, as long as the main partition is set to Primary, Active. I'd estimate that this is the case a vast majority of the time. Still, if you would like to quickly confirm that this is a primary partition and that there is only one partition on the USB device, go to:
Start
Run
Type in: compmgmt.msc
Once the Computer Management control opens, go to: Storage, Disk Management. The drive should be listed as active with Primary Partition identified with a blue line going across the graphical representation of the drive. If this is not the case, you can delete the partition by right-clicking and then setting up a new partition with the unallocated space.
STEP 3. Format the USB storage device to use the FAT32 filesystem.
Formatting the drive accomplishes two things. First, most computers are capable of booting from FAT32, but not NTFS. Formatting as FAT32 ensures that you will not be running off FAT, NTFS, or some other file system that your system may not be capable of booting from or may cause problems with the installer.
Second, you will be completely removing all existing data on the drive, which may contain hidden files, temporary files, or system files that could interfere with the Windows Vista installer.
To format the drive, go to:
Start
My Computer
Select the USB device
Right click and select Format...
Please make sure you have selected the appropriate drive to format!
This is an example only. You need to have over 2.5GB of free space on the drive, not 979 MB.
STEP 4. Copy the entire Windows Vista DVD-ROM to USB thumbdrive
Once you have successfully formatted the USB device, you can now go ahead and copy the entire DVD-ROM to the USB drive. The best method of doing this is not through Windows Explorer, but the Windows command console. There are a number of reasons for this, but a quick explanation is that you want to make sure ALL of the files are copied over.
Follow the following steps:
Start
Run
Type: cmd
You will want to run the following:
xcopy [Vista DVD drive letter]:\*.* /s/e/f [USB device drive letter]:\
You must know the drive letter where the Vista installation DVD is located, as well as the drive letter of the USB drive. For example, if the Windows Vista DVD-ROM is in drive D, and the USB device is drive E, you will execute this command:
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
Once you start copying files over, you should not interrupt this process. Once its complete you can close the window. Congratulations, you should now have a copy of the Windows Vista installation on your USB drive.
STEP 5. Install Windows Vista from USB
Remove the Windows Vista DVD from your computer. Access the USB device and run setup.exe. You should see the following:
If you run the installation from within Windows XP, you will be able to do an upgrade installation, but you should now also be able to boot from the USB at start up. This will let you do a clean install of Windows Vista from the USB drive.
To do this restart your computer, access the boot menu when the system post screen appears, and choose 'Boot from USB'. Or access your computer's BIOS and set the first boot device to USB.
You should have at least a 2.5GB to 3GB capacity on the USB drive. Its very unusual to see a drive with 3GB capacity sold, so you may want to buy a 4GB with a fast transfer rate.
Installing from a USB device offers the benefit of a faster installation, since DVD-ROM read speeds are significantly slower than USB 2.0, which, at the time of this writing, can reach something close to 20-25 megabytes per second.
What this involves is not only formatting the USB drive to use the FAT32 filesystem, but also copying the entire contents of the Windows Vista DVD-ROM to the USB thumbdrive itself.
INSTRUCTIONS:
STEP 1. Make sure your BIOS is capable of booting from USB
Most new computers are 100% capable of booting from USB device. Sometimes the option is disabled in the computer's BIOS. A more common situation is that when you start up the computer you may have an option to hit F12 to start a Boot Menu, which lets you pick what to boot from. Check to make sure you can in fact boot from USB by trying to access this menu or accessing your BIOS settings.
(Instructions on how to do this should be in your computer's manual or motherboard manual).
STEP 2. Make sure your USB drive partition is set to Primary.
Disks are assigned space using partitions. It is very unlikely that you will need to re-partition or change the partition of the USB drive, as long as the main partition is set to Primary, Active. I'd estimate that this is the case a vast majority of the time. Still, if you would like to quickly confirm that this is a primary partition and that there is only one partition on the USB device, go to:
Start
Run
Type in: compmgmt.msc
Once the Computer Management control opens, go to: Storage, Disk Management. The drive should be listed as active with Primary Partition identified with a blue line going across the graphical representation of the drive. If this is not the case, you can delete the partition by right-clicking and then setting up a new partition with the unallocated space.
STEP 3. Format the USB storage device to use the FAT32 filesystem.
Formatting the drive accomplishes two things. First, most computers are capable of booting from FAT32, but not NTFS. Formatting as FAT32 ensures that you will not be running off FAT, NTFS, or some other file system that your system may not be capable of booting from or may cause problems with the installer.
Second, you will be completely removing all existing data on the drive, which may contain hidden files, temporary files, or system files that could interfere with the Windows Vista installer.
To format the drive, go to:
Start
My Computer
Select the USB device
Right click and select Format...
Please make sure you have selected the appropriate drive to format!
This is an example only. You need to have over 2.5GB of free space on the drive, not 979 MB.
STEP 4. Copy the entire Windows Vista DVD-ROM to USB thumbdrive
Once you have successfully formatted the USB device, you can now go ahead and copy the entire DVD-ROM to the USB drive. The best method of doing this is not through Windows Explorer, but the Windows command console. There are a number of reasons for this, but a quick explanation is that you want to make sure ALL of the files are copied over.
Follow the following steps:
Start
Run
Type: cmd
You will want to run the following:
xcopy [Vista DVD drive letter]:\*.* /s/e/f [USB device drive letter]:\
You must know the drive letter where the Vista installation DVD is located, as well as the drive letter of the USB drive. For example, if the Windows Vista DVD-ROM is in drive D, and the USB device is drive E, you will execute this command:
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
Once you start copying files over, you should not interrupt this process. Once its complete you can close the window. Congratulations, you should now have a copy of the Windows Vista installation on your USB drive.
STEP 5. Install Windows Vista from USB
Remove the Windows Vista DVD from your computer. Access the USB device and run setup.exe. You should see the following:
If you run the installation from within Windows XP, you will be able to do an upgrade installation, but you should now also be able to boot from the USB at start up. This will let you do a clean install of Windows Vista from the USB drive.
To do this restart your computer, access the boot menu when the system post screen appears, and choose 'Boot from USB'. Or access your computer's BIOS and set the first boot device to USB.
Total Comments 1
Comments
 | Hmm , is this really faster ? i've just setup a corsair 8gb flash voyager USB stick , at "loading windows setup" it took 7 mins ? from the DVD it took less than 2mins for "loading windows setup" to finish? so at what point is it faster ? this was from bootup and not running setup within windows. + i believe you also need to do the following -: We need to set the boot sector of the USB Stick. Open cmd, access your usb flash drive. We'll call ours J: j:\> cd Boot j:\boot>bootsect.exe /nt60 j: You Will get something like this: Target volumes will be updated with BOOTMGR compatible bootcode. G: ({\\?\Volume{efe9737e-7fd1-11dc-9c09-0017314f7a6a}) Updated FAT32 filesystem bootcode. The update may be unreliable since the volume could not be locked during the update: Access is denied. Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes. All done... |
  Updated 02-09-2008 at 10:43 AM by whatnow |
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