I have found a much easier way to install Windows 7 from a USB Flash drive. Unlike other methods where you have to write complicated commands, this method can be completed even by those who have very little computer background.
The whole process takes only two steps, run UNetbootin, load the Windows 7 ISO file, and finally restart your computer. See how we installed Ubuntu from USB using UNetbootin here.
Before you begin, you will require the following:
- USB Flash Drive (4GB minimum)
- Windows 7 ISO Image file
- UNetbootin
Note: If UNetbootin doesn’t work, try out the Microsoft’s official tool called Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool.
Now insert the USB drive, run UNetbootin, and select Disk Image as ISO. Browse your local drive for Windows 7 ISO that you downloaded and click Open. Now Select Type as USB and choose the drive. Once done, it will look like a bit similar to the screenshot shown below.
Click OK and it will begin extracting all installation files to the USB drive. The whole process will take some time(10-15 minutes), so have patience.
Once the installation is complete, reboot your computer. Now while your system is starting up press the appropriate button(usually F1, F2, F12, ESC, Backspace, or Escape) to bring up Bios Boot Menu. Change the startup order to boot USB by default, usually you will have to press F6 to move the selected USB device on top. Once done, save changes and restart the system.
Windows 7 installation screen on my HP Dv5t laptop.
Wasn’t that easy? Enjoy!
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57 Comments
Dude, thank you so much. I’ve been looking for an easy way to mount this from file onto a jump drive without the .ISO, and this seems to be the only logical way.
It’s not only logical, but it actually works! Since I have tested it myself.
very simple method .. nice will give it a try tmmorow . need to find a usb drive first
Great idea…
I’ve followed instructions and when I reboot, UNetbootin window appears on screen, Default is highlighted near top of window and at bottom it says “Automatic boot in x seconds….”. Once it does countdown to 1 second it just starts countdown over again saying “Automatic boot in 10 seconds….” and starts countdown again and again, etc…
So, never boots into Win7 installer….
Any suggestions???
Thanks!
This seems to be a weird error that I have never heard of before. You can try re-installing it on your USB and give it another try.
You are facing this issue because your flash drive is not using NTFS file system. Right-click your flash drive, click Format and choose NTFS in the file system drop-down. After this you can follow the method in the guide.
Not necessarily, I used NTFS and still get this error. I am beginning to believe it is an issue that you get when using Win 7 32bit to create a Win 7 64bit image.
Does it have to be a flash drive or will an external hard drive work as well?
I haven’t tested it with an External Hard drive, but it may work. You can try it out and let us know.
Nice Article… and saved my time as I seen this while I was doing disk part. thanks. I should add a note for the version of unebootin is matter you to do. I tried it with Version 3.19 but did not work. Download latest one. Cheers
Will this work for an upgrade?
This works…make sure you format your USB drive as NTFS. Thanks!
My USB is format with NTFS, I follow the guide and what I got is “No bootable partition in table”
Any ideas how this can be fix?
Doesn’t matter if you format your flashdrive in Fat32 or NTFS, it simply doesn’t work. Either way it just boots into a menu that does absolutely nothing. I only tried it with Win7 RTM, so who knows how it might work with other operating systems.
NOT WORK for me
thank you
Does this RTM work on Desktop or laptops only?
Microsoft has a tool available that can do this much easier. download it here http://images2.store.microsoft.com/prod/cluster...
When i reboot i get an error “NTLDR is missing”.
Any ideas what to do?
My Flash disc is damage and I will pring another
external hard drive didnt work for me.
where do i get the Windows 7 ISO Image file?
i am using unetbootin in ubuntu, and i want to create a usb bootable win xp…is it possible?
No work for me.
No extract any file in the second operation and only copy the Syslinux in root directory of USB. When i reboot computer the default option bucles eternity.
I copied the ISO content to the root directory and no work again… (how is the USB directory structure in yours exitous PENS?) xD
Finaly i tried the oficial Microsoft Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool but i think that this utility requiers original ISO file (for me no work…)
Sorry for my horrible English, and i hope we learn something tonigth…
No work for me.
No extract any file in the second operation and only copy the Syslinux in root directory of USB. When i reboot computer the default option bucles eternity.
I copied the ISO content to the root directory and no work again… (how is the USB directory structure in yours exitous PENS?) xD
Finaly i tried the oficial Microsoft Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool but i think that this utility requiers original ISO file (for me no work…)
Sorry for my horrible English, and i hope we learn something tonigth…
No work for me.
No extract any file in the second operation and only copy the Syslinux in root directory of USB. When i reboot computer the default option bucles eternity.
I copied the ISO content to the root directory and no work again… (how is the USB directory structure in yours exitous PENS?) xD
Finaly i tried the oficial Microsoft Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool but i think that this utility requiers original ISO file (for me no work…)
Sorry for my horrible English, and i hope we learn something tonigth…
Does anyone know what it mean when you did everything right, buy upon boot from the usb, the screen goes black with a little underline thing blinking and nothing else.
it means you didn’t do something right.
I just want to know how to install Windows 7 or Windows XP from the same USB.
You know both install in the same USB and choose which one install from the USB
Many thanks
this one doesnt work for me at all whenever i try its say try to reformatting it as fat 32 thats wat im fucking doing since mornin…any solution?
this one doesnt work for me at all whenever i try its say try to reformatting it as fat 32 thats wat im fucking doing since mornin…any solution?
I Have a problem, It copies the files ok, but on the boot page does not start just keeps restarting the boot page is it the iso file that i installed or the flashdrive whats wrong
it won't go past the boot page plz help.
Okay, laugh if you want, but i was trying this from win98, it worked fine… well untill i chose the unetbootin boot option…. then it just starts trying to read from the floppy drive???? why? and is there any other way i can do this???? i have no internet acces on the computer im trying to install it to and it cant read dvds, but i cann transfer files from this compter to it .. help plz if u can …
The problem with UNetBootin (current version 408) is that it boots SysLinux and runs its menu from there. You can get out of the menu to the boot prompt (Esc key), but Windows setup.exe isn't an executable file under Linux, so I don't see any way this is ever going to work.
If you look at UNetBootIn's website, they divide Linux distros into those whose installations are supported, those which can be booted, and those which can't. There's also a short list of other supported bootable apps. So it isn't even reliable for Linux, never mind Windows.
If you look at SysLinux's configuration, it is possible to set it up to boot NT, but you'd need to update syslinux.cfg and provide some more files. UNetBootIn has set it up to run a Linux boot menu.
Maybe previous versions worked differently?
wat de jr said i too aggre tht is not working for windows …….its fully relaible for linux only thts de problem ……. can u said any thing different version works properly …….its not supporting for the portable live version also …!
easy dude
unetbootin windows and linux distros just depend on the machine ur installing the unetbootin, it has nothing to do with the OS u wanna boot from ur USB hard disk drive.
hope it helps;)
Hey guys tried a lot but failed to do so. Reason was that i was using XP. This is beacuse Xp’s version of diskpart doesnt recognize USB as a disk when we type list disk . Thus Game Over. But still I found a video that shows you how to make bootable usb on xp.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4405749/install_w...
Hey guys tried a lot but failed to do so. Reason was that i was using XP. This is beacuse Xp’s version of diskpart doesnt recognize USB as a disk when we type list disk . Thus Game Over. But still I found a video that shows you how to make bootable usb on xp.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4405749/install_w...
ThanX
This is very awesome. This is also unbelievable. Thanks for unetbootin……….
u get it to work?
I have no boot menu on my laptop.
And installation Windows 7 DVD was scratched.
What i did was:
1) download windows 7 installation ISO;
2) unpack it on flash drive;
3) boot from any installation CD/DVD (just to get close
to command promt);
4) format c:;
5) copy contents of flash drive to c:;
(xcopy f:*.* c:);
6) reboot.
The PC will boot from c: as it was some DVD and will actually install Windows on itself.
The obvious problem under XP is that diskpart doesn’t support removable disks. I just ran across a nice app called Bootsage that works great under Windows XP as well. Link here: http://firesage.com/bootsage
I am getting the Error 730 which says cannot format the USB. Unknown error.
What next?
Wait, what if i don’t want to install windows were im doing all of the files. Please help
here is a very simple way of doing that:
dd if=windows.iso of=/dev/usb
for windows users get dd from the net. All *nix osx should have it installed by default.
awesome but now my keyboard doesn’t work
Please do not use this method, it took 5 hours to write the iso to the disk, the disk wouldn’t install the os and i tried 3 different 8gb sticks, i destroyed them all and they are corrupt. big waste of time and money
You “corrupted” 3 8gb sticks? You’re officially a lying idiot.
reformat it dumbass.
hahahaha 3 8 gig sticks if you did you just failed got it to work first time
This is SO easy and IT WORKS! (wish I found it earlier! – Thanks so much for your instructions Nakodari!)
I followed a few instructions on the net including this one:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_install_windows_7_beta_a_usb_key?page=1%2C1
But failed miserably up to the point of doing the Bootsect.exe /nt60 H: (my drive was H) (keep saying access denied) So I picked it up from there and downloaded UNetbootin on my current (Window7) machine. The goal was to upgrade from XP to Window 7 Ultimate (ISO file) on my CD/DVD Drive-less Acer Aspire One Netbook and everything worked without a glitch.
The only thing that I should mention was that after Windows 7 has finished installing it requires restarting again to complete the process. At that final restart I had to pull the USB out of the drive (remove the boot disk? lol) to prevent the computer from running the whole process again.
After that it just runs through the initial setup process with the date/times, wifi, etc.
Thanks again for the great tutorial!
Using Win 7 32bit and Unetbootin on my laptop to create an image for Win 7 64bit to install on my PC but it won’t work. I’ve tried Fat32 and NTFS but neither works.
I also tried DiskPart but got this error message “This version of F:boot\bootsect.exe is not compatible with the version of Windows you’re running. Check your computer’s system information to see whether you need a X86 (32-Bit) or X64(64-Bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher.”
Do I have to put up with Win 7 32bit?
The easiest method yet
OFFICIAL AND FREE FROM MICROSOFT
http://store.microsoft.com/help/iso-tool
It isworking randomly. One time is working another one not. It is the f**ng unbnutu ,, what a fu..ing name
Actually speaking this method sometime works or sometimes gives me error @ the bootscreen itself.Truth is it worked for me @ first.Dunno whats wrong now!Anyway there are a few more alternatives to this like using microsoft tool or use WintoFlash utility like the one mention here:http://sunil-bhaskar.blogspot.com/2010/08/windows-7-installation-from-usbflash.html
This is so great thank you!!! I’ve read so much BS and this is by far the best advice on the Internet for installing windows from a jump drive!! I installed Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool , not the unetbootin and it’s working great!! My problem was some code 5 error when I tried to install Windows 7 from the DVD drive on a brand new hard drive. Every website I read NEVER gave an option for installing Windows 7 from a USB drive onto a brand new hard drive! Sure if I had XP already on there using the DVD would be no problem! But I can’t believe there is really nothing out there for people who are installing windows on a brand new hard drive with no OS! Any how thank you again! I’ve installed Windows on probably 100 different computers over the years and it’s CRAZY how it ALWAYS different!!!!!!!! Well I guess I should not complain…I work for a company who provides tech support for businesses with windows environments…and if windows didn’t suck and have so many issues…we would not be in business!
Hey, how should i create a bootable os disk without the help of a floppy drive successfully?
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