WinToFlash: Make a Windows USB Install Stick
Image courtesy of Download Squad
I spent a few hours the past week installing Windows on different devices. I installed Windows 7 on several machines and Windows XP on others. What made these installs easier than others I have done in the past is having the Windows install disk on a USB stick. This is especially handy for netbooks or other notebooks that lack an optical drive. While the install from a USB stick is easy to do, creating the USB sticks in a bootable fashion took a bit of effort.
A free utility comes to the rescue and makes Windows install sets drop dead easy to make. WinToFlash builds USB sticks from Windows installs with just a few clicks. It is designed to make the USB disks easy to make and easy to use, and that is a wonderful thing. I wish I had WinToFlash when I built my install sticks. WinToFlash works with Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 2008, and Windows 7.
(via Download Squad)
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Unfortunately a day too late, struggled making a bootable USB drive with Windows 7 yesterday. Have successfulyl made bootable ubuntu live USB sticks and one with FreeDOS in the past, but the one I got (with another method than this) ended up simply booting into the existing OS when chosen as boot disk. Will try this method, would be nice to have a stick with windows 7
Man, me too.
Me three :)
I just installed an XP on an EEEPC 2 days ago, and I had to struggle through 2 different tutorials (the first one didn’t work)
How does it work?
Wintoflash is free?
how to built xp bootable flashdisk?
thx a lot
LOL…I just went through 3 Windows 7 installs on my Acer Aspire One and wish Google had brought this to my attention last Saturday while searching for a good Windows USB solution. I had as much trouble getting a workable USB install as I did finding my 4 GB USB stick. (It was worth the trouble though, as Win7 runs fantastic on the AAO!)
I actually thought that it would be pretty easy, but I guess I’ve been spoiled by uNetBootin to make Linux builds for the last year as I try the different OSs on the AAO.
Tried this method now and it worked! Very quick, very easy, very working.
You don’t even have to download anything – windows already comes with a program that lets you do this. You can see a video from Microsoft on it here:
http://edge.technet.com/Media/Installing-Win7-using-a-USB-Stick/
And nice step-by-step instructions here:
http://blogs.technet.com/jeffa36/archive/2009/04/22/windows-7-setting-up-a-usb-bootable-device-for-installs.aspx
Was wondering if someone could point me in the direction of a tutorial showing how to install windows 7 on my Samsung NC10. Using this method.Thanks.
You dont need a tutorial. It’s so straight forward it’s almost a joke. You make the bootable drive by simply following the wizard in this app, then you make sure your NC10 is set to boot from USB (in the BIOS), then you plug in and boot from the drive and follow the instructions
i just opened the ISO (win7 or vista, probably xp too) in a virtual drive and copied all the files onto the USB drive. i don’t think you need any special programs or utilities to do this.
i happened to be using an SD card in a USB reader. i wish i could just boot straight from my built-in SD card reader.
Great tutorial! I have used it a lot with my netbooks (Dell Mini and a Samsung NC10 white)
I tried this yesterday with my HP Mini, e.g. SSD drive and it worked flawless with Win7 RTM. Highly recommended, just make sure you toggle to the version for Win7. Now I have my 8 Gig USB drive loaded with Win7, Plus Office 2007,ActiveWords plus a number of other critical apps for that rainy day if the hard drive dies.
Thanks for pointing to it, invaluable application.
just use a UltraISO v.9.3.3.2685 it does that when you select from the menu “Bootable” and then “Write disk image…” Just search for it on google as “UltraISO 9.3.3 2685 torrent”. Is way better, has more options and you can “burn” an entire ISO to a flash drive. It only has some bugs with Linux distros but with windows 7, XP and older version works just fine.
does anyone know if there is a way to install more than one version of Windows (XP HOME, XP PRO, WIN 7) onto a USB stick using this method??
Hi, All:
I tried all the options (in latest version 0.5.0013) that I can think of with this tool, and it still doesn’t work. Here’s what I did:
– Made two 8GB SanDisk USB keys to try both “Transfer XP setup to USB key”, as well as “Create Windows XP Emergency Bootloader USB Driver”;
– Also tried “FAT16 CHS” and “FAT32 CHS” as the file system options;
All 4 of these options only get the laptop screen showing “Remove any media and disk, and press any key to continue”. Press any key will only get this message displayed repeatedly.
If I use the FAT16 LBA and FAT32 LBA options, then the display will show nothing except a blinking cursor.
I looked the USB key content, it has boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntldr, #SLDR$, and txtsetup.sif at its root, with $WIN_NT$.~BT and $WIN_NT$.~LS sub folders, which contain i386 and System32 etc. folders, so they looks right. But booting will not proceed after press any key. Tried Ctrl-C or ESC keys will not break the repeating mesage cycle.
So what was the cause for the “removing media and press key” message? Is there anyway to make this work?
My laptop is Lenovo’s T61 laptop, with BIOS supporting booting from USB HDD and USB FDD options. I tried to move one of them before the other, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. The machine has XP SP2 installed, and due to a change made to the boot.ini file, it blue-screened, and won’t boot from safe mode anymore, and its CD drive doesn’t work anymore, so I am trying to rescue it by booting from USB key, and hopefully I can edit the boot.ini file to correct the problem.
Appreciate if anyone has any insight and troubleshooting suggestions.
Thanks!
This program is a lifesaver for XP user’s. Thank you!!!!
nice info
i have tried this before
Great info. Also i have read a nice tutorial here ,is really simple to use. http://www.place77.com/article/48/wintoflash-tutorial/