Installing Windows 7 from a USB stick

Update: There is now this Microsoft tool to do this for you.

This is borrowed from Dennis Chung’s page about the same title. I’ve adapted it slightly.

1. Diskpart
2. List volume
3. Select Volume 5 (Replace 5 with number reflecting your USB Drive)
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. active
7. format fs=fat32 quick
8. assign

Mount the ISO using Virtual Clone Drive. Then copy all the files from the newly mounted disk to the USB stick.

I’ve tried this out with a Sandisk Cruzer and had no problems (except a minor issue with a raid driver crashing).

I'm Chris Small, a software engineer working in London. This is my tech blog. Find out more about me via Github, Stackoverflow, Resume