The BIOS in every modern computer is capable of supporting booting from USB drives. This allows you to install the operating system using a regular USB flash drive. Sometimes the option to create a bootable Windows USB flash drive is the only one, since in modern computers more and more often they stop installing disk drives.
Components required to create a flash drive
- You will need the original Windows ISO format disc image. Homemade assemblies should not be used.
- USB flash drive, from 4 to 8 gigabytes. The size depends on the version of Windows you are installing - the newer the version, the more space you need.
- An application that can create a bootable one from a regular USB flash drive. This can be, for example, Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool, Rufus, UltraISO, WinSetupFromUSB, etc.
- A computer with Windows already installed. It is on it that the installation flash drive will be created.
Bootable USB stick using “Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool”
Go to “My Computer” and find the flash drive icon in the list. Right-click on it to open the context menu and click "Format".
Next, you need to find and install the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool. Anyone can find it and download it for free on the Microsoft website. The easiest way to find it is using any search engine by typing the name into a string.
After running the installed program, you will see a small window. Further creation is divided into 4 stages. First you need to click the “Browse” button and select the Windows image and click “Next”. Then select the "USB Device" item, select the path to the recently formatted flash drive and click "Begin copyng". After that, the program will independently perform the necessary actions and the bootable USB flash drive is ready!
Bootable USB stick with "Rufus"
The latest version can be found on the official website of the program, and the website is easy to find by typing the name of the program into the search bar. This program is used without installation.
After downloading and running it, find the item “Device” in the application window and specify the letter of the flash drive there. Next, find “Partition scheme and system interface type” and select “MBR for BIOS or UEFI computers” if a PC with a regular BIOS. Otherwise, select “GPT for UEFI Computers”. For a regular BIOS (standard situation) file system, select NTFS, the default cluster size.
Next, select the image of the distribution kit by clicking on the DVD-rom icon. In the window that opens, specify the path to it and click “Open”. After a while, the bootable Windows USB flash drive will be ready.
