How to create a bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive Manually

1. Connect your USB flash drive to your PC and backup all files before proceeding to the next step.

2. Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator to launch the Command Prompt with admin rights. Click Yes for the UAC prompt, type "diskpart" without the quotes, and hit enter. You can also get here by simply typing "diskpart" without the quotes into the Start Menu and hitting enter.


Now type "list disk" without the quotes and hit enter. Take a look at the Size column and figure out which disk number your USB drive is. Ours is number 1, so we're going to type "select disk 1" without the quotes and hit enter. Now we're going to wipe it by typing "clean" without the quotes and hitting enter (make sure to do a backup of the contents if you haven't already).


At this point we want to prepare the USB drive for the files and make sure it is bootable. Type "create partition primary" without the quotes and hit enter. Then type "select partition 1" without the quotes and hit enter. Next type "active" without the quotes and hit enter. Finally, type "format fs=fat32" without quotes and hit enter (if you choose to use ntfs, you'll later have to run the "Bootsect.exe /nt60 G:" command to put boot manager compatible files onto your USB flash drive to make it a bootable device). This one will take a while, so go grab a snack, we'll wait. When that's done, type "assign" without the quotes and hit enter (this will assign a new drive letter to the USB flash drive).


An AutoPlay window like the one above will appear. Remember the drive letter (in our case it is H:), close the window, type "exit" without the quotes and hit enter. If you are working with an .ISO image, the best way to do this last part is to mount the file with a program like Virtual Clone Drive or Daemon Tools. Alternatively, you can extract the files from the .ISO image and simply copy them to the USB drive, but since we've been using the command prompt up to this point, we'll show you how to do the last step with it as well.

Bonus: install any edition of Windows 7

This will make sure that your Windows 7 installer no longer has a specific version of Windows 7 set as the default, and you will be prompted to choose the version you want to install. Remember that while this gives you a more universal Windows 7 installer, you still need to make sure you are choosing the edition that you own, or you will not be able to activate Windows 7 with the key you have obtained.