Make a Bootable External Hard Drive and Install Windows 7/8

Step 1: Format the Drive

Just place the flash drive in the USB port of your computer. Open command prompt (cmd). You can do
that by pressing WINKEY+R, right click on the listed file and click on Run as administrator.
Enter the following commands in the same order as I did here:
diskpart
list disk
select disk z (where z is the number corresponding for your USB disk. You have to replace it with the
corresponding letter from your own system).
clean
create partition primary
active
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
exit

Please be careful using the select command (so you dont select and format your hard disk instead)

If everything goes well, this is how your cmd screen will look like
Step 2: Mount The Windows 8 ISO Image Into A Virtual Drive
If you dont have a physical optical drive you should mount the image into a virtual drive. You can install
and use PowerISO
Step 3: Make The External Hard Disk Bootable
Im assuming that F is your drive letter with Windows 8 ISO image and G: is the location of your external
hard disk (or flash drive) . Open the command prompt screen (as administrator) and type the
commands:
F:
cd boot
bootsect.exe /nt60 g:

Also, dont forget to triple check the target location so you dont accidentally delete the boot sector of your
hard disk
Step 4: Copy The Installer Files
After the above step, dont close the command prompt (at least not yet). At this moment your new
external hard disk or flash drive is bootable but you need to execute one more command in order to
transfer the files to your new drive. You have to type the following command line:
xcopy f:\*.* g: /e /f /h
Again replace the drive letters with the ones that apply to you. Alternatively you can copy all the files in
the virtual drive to the flash drive or external hard drive by using Windows Explorer, but using XCOPY
ensures that system and hidden files are also copied.
Step 5: Boot Off The External Hard Drive or USB Flash Drive
To use and boot from your newly created drive on your netbook or computer, first you have to set your
computer you must set it to boot through the USB flash drive. In order to do this shut down your
computer, go in the CMOS setup by pressing the DEL or F2 key when the computer power on, without
unplug the newly created external hard drive or USB Flash Drive from the machine. Set the device as the
primary boot option, save the changes BIOS and restart. On newer computers you can boot from the

device without entering into BIOS by pressing either ESC, F9 or F11 (different key on different
manufacturers).

Now you can install Windows as usual. Please be aware that if youve changed the boot sequence in the
BIOS, remember to change it back as it was after copying the files (usually after first automatic reboot

First of all you need that Windows 7/Vista/8 (or XP) is installed on disk.
If you have no Windows system on disk there is no meaning in making it bootable (at least you
need WinRE installed on disk)
For Vista/7/8 you need only 2 commands to make a disk bootable (using recovery/install DVD/USB).
Open command prompt:
1. bootsect /nt60 /all /mbr

2. bcdboot c:\windows
assuming Windows 7/Vista is installed in c:\windows.
There is also another requirement - one primary partition on disk must be marked as active.
diskpart.exe can be used to check if there is an active partition on disk and also to mark a partition
as active.
If you are booted to Windows 8 the commands above can be found in \windows\system32.
You need to open command prompt with admin privileges to successfully execute commands.