Windows - Install Windows Operating System from USB Drive

Hi Everybody,

I am here to explain you how to install an operating system if you don't have a DVD Drive in your computer. Most of the computers shipped with USB ports and USB boot option available in the BIOS. Before we start with this make sure you set the following configurations.

• Enable USB boot in the BIOS
• Change the Boot priority to boot from the other devices (NOT DVD Drive / Hard Drive).

Please see the Mother Board / BIOS Manual if you have any doubts in setting the above configurations.

This is all about the hardware settings, now we will discuss the windows part of it.

diskpart command is used to make a USB Drive a bootable OS package.

 Follow the below simple steps to get this done.

1. Open Run window by pressing Win+R key.

2. Type cmd and hit enter.

3. Now we have the Command Prompt, type diskpart and hit enter.

4. List the disk drives connected to the computer.

list disk

5. Select the Connected USB disk from the list (If you have doubt on disk selection, cross check the size of disk and size shown in the list).

select disk 1

Note: This site will not be responsible for any data loss due to wrong selection of disk.

If you want to see the details about the disk use the below command.

detail disk

6. Removes existing partition or volume formatting from the disk with the below command.

clean

7. Create a primary partition in the current select disk.

create partition primary

8. Select the created partition.

select partition 1

9. Make the selected partition active.

active

10. Format the partition with the appropriate file system. For windows, FAT32 file system.

format fs=fat32

11. Assign the drive letter to the new partition.

assign

Now our USB drive is ready to copy the Operating System disk content.

12. Exit from the diskpart

exit

13. Copy the OS Installation Disk content to the USB Drive. We use XCOPY command to copy the contents.

xcopy K:\*.* /s/e/f L:\

Here K:\ is the root folder with the OS Installation files and L:\ is the USB Drive.

14. Plug the USB Drive, Boot from it and complete the installation.

Thanks for reading my Blog !