Install Windows 7 From USB Drive [Requires 2 Simple Steps]

By Nakodari on May 19 2009 118 Comments

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.

UNetbootin main windows 7

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.

unetbootin installing windows 7 iso

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 install screen - boot

Windows 7 installation screen on my HP Dv5t laptop.

Wasn’t that easy? Enjoy!

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  • Stephen

    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.

    • http://www.addicitivetips.com Nakodari

      It’s not only logical, but it actually works! Since I have tested it myself. :)

    • Casey Parker

      Being a regular user of various linux distros, I use the same method for all of my installs. I probably would have tried this one way or another, assuming it would work! It’s nice to know that Windows folks have the same kind of flexibility, these days. It wasn’t so easy with previous Windows versions.

  • zakir

    very simple method .. nice will give it a try tmmorow . need to find a usb drive first :P

  • ArchiMark

    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!

    • http://www.addicitivetips.com Nakodari

      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. :)

    • Ravi Gupta

      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.

      • http://www.optimisationbeacon.com/ Rob Kingston

        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.

      • Wakka

        FYI this indeed solves this particular issue. Thanks!

    • Eden Caldas

      same here… :(

  • Nick

    Does it have to be a flash drive or will an external hard drive work as well?

    • http://www.addicitivetips.com Nakodari

      I haven’t tested it with an External Hard drive, but it may work. You can try it out and let us know. :)

      • Ainelli

        Do i need to format my usb or external?

      • Ainelli

        Do i need to format my usb or external?

  • Steve

    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

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  • pole

    Will this work for an upgrade?

  • Tanny

    This works…make sure you format your USB drive as NTFS. Thanks!

  • J

    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?

  • SyntaxError

    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.

  • fere

    NOT WORK for me

  • NIck

    thank you

  • Splash

    Does this RTM work on Desktop or laptops only?

  • http://www.facebook.com/ejal.de.klerk Ejal de Klerk

    Microsoft has a tool available that can do this much easier. download it here http://images2.store.microsoft.com/prod/cluster…

  • Eric

    When i reboot i get an error “NTLDR is missing”.
    Any ideas what to do?

  • brahino

    My Flash disc is damage and I will pring another

  • u dont need to know my name

    external hard drive didnt work for me.

  • bob

    where do i get the Windows 7 ISO Image file?

  • lonirop

    i am using unetbootin in ubuntu, and i want to create a usb bootable win xp…is it possible?

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  • txabo8

    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…

  • txabo8

    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…

  • txabo8

    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…

  • qwertyology

    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.

    • matt

      it means you didn’t do something right.

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  • http://www.fretelweb.com/ Ronny Fretel

    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

  • zaza98

    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?

  • zaza98

    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?

  • unetbootin usr

    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.

  • Curt

    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 …

  • JR

    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?

    • ralph

      easy dude :P

      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;)

  • mohankrish420

    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 …!

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  • ayoosh

    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…

  • ayoosh

    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…

  • John

    ThanX

  • http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/install- arun

    This is very awesome. This is also unbelievable. Thanks for unetbootin……….

    • bob

      u get it to work?

  • http://cherimoya-eihn.com/ Cherimoya Eihn

    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.

  • Darius

    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

    • Manoj

      I am getting the Error 730 which says cannot format the USB. Unknown error.
      What next?

  • Juan

    Wait, what if i don’t want to install windows were im doing all of the files. Please help

  • http://cyhex.com cyhex

    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.

  • matt

    awesome but now my keyboard doesn’t work

  • http://www.cre8ive65.ca.tf cre8ive65

    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

    • Dan

      You “corrupted” 3 8gb sticks? You’re officially a lying idiot.

      reformat it dumbass.

      • http://www.tomdarko.com Thomas Hynes

        hahahaha 3 8 gig sticks if you did you just failed got it to work first time :P

  • Mishie

    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! :)

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  • http://www.optimisationbeacon.com/ Rob Kingston

    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?

  • odotan

    The easiest method yet

    OFFICIAL AND FREE FROM MICROSOFT

    http://store.microsoft.com/help/iso-tool

  • noone

    It isworking randomly. One time is working another one not. It is the f**ng unbnutu ,, what a fu..ing name

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