How to install Windows 7 from a USB

Requirements

A 4GB or 8GB (preferably 8GB) USB Flash Drive
Windows ISO files [1]
WinRAR [2]
WinToFlash [3]
*RemoveWAT [4]


Instructions

Upon installing the files the first thing you'll need to do is extract the Windows 7 Ultimate ISO files into a separate folder:




This is what they'll look like:




Next you'll need to Format the USB Flash Drive. Warning, this will remove anything you have on the Flash Drive so please move anything out of it before continuing with this process:




And edit the settings to this:


The reason we have switched from FAT32 (the default) to NTFS is due to the fact that if you try to load Windows 7 using FAT32 it will take a much larger amount of time, opposed to using NTFS, which will be reasonably quick.

Once finished with the settings, click "Start", making sure the "Quick Format" box is checked. Whilst the flash drive is formatting open up WinToFlash. Once it has opened click the "Advanced" tab, and you should notice a drop down bar with multiple options. Click it and set it to "Transfer Windows Vista/2008/7/8 setup to USB drive", and click run:




Choose the necessary files (ie, the ISO files you have extracted) and the USB you'll be using:





Click "Run". This will copy all of the Windows 7 files onto your USB, this will take several minutes.

Once that process has finished you will need to backup your files (just in case) and restart your computer.

Upon restarting, after the first image flashes (usually the logo of the of your computer model, or laptop model) press the "DEL" or "ESC" button to enter the BIOS. Once there it will come up with a display of services to boot from. Choose your USB (Can come up as "USB Flash Drive"), and hit Enter.

The start-up screen should load, asking you what version of Windows 7 Ultimate you would like to install. If your computer's editions is 32-bit choose "x86". If your computer's edition is 64-bit choose "x64".




Follow the instructions from there, making sure you click "Upgrade" if you would like to keep all of your files.

Congratulations! After the setup process has finished you should have a fully activated version of Windows 7 Ultimate!

 

Generally if you need to install off a USB you have torrented it, which is frowned upon on sythe.
I only condone torrenting windows if you own a legit serial key(since you're only paying for the key not the software)

 

Moved to Help, Requests & Tech. Support.

 

Pretty snazzy guide. I have done something similar to this a few times but it's nice to have it all written out.

 

Nice

But I thought you could just have the disk image in the USB and boot from USB if your BIOS can do it never really tried it, but this works

 

Yea, you can do it that way but this is much easier.

 

Will this work for XP? I was trying to figure out how to put XP on my netbook (I don't like the limitations on Win7 Starter, and XP is lighter than Win7 Pro).

For a bootable flash drive like Black Tux mentioned, you need more than just the iso. If anyone knows of some freeware that can make the iso bootable on a flash drive, please let me know. I tried a couple, but they didn't seem to work.

 

It'll work for every ISO, I recently did it for XP.

Black Tux every BIOS can, just switch the boot priority from whatever the first is to usb.