Installing Windows from a thumb drive is vastly superior to burning a copy to a DVD which will fill some landfill somewhere with toxic stuff. Not to mention its. Fix External USB Hard Disk drive not detecting not working properly problem in Windows 8, 7, Vista XP. You can even install Windows Vista with USB 2. All you need is a high speed 4GB flash memory only to create a bootable Windows Vista on. Heres how to boot from a USB device, like a flash drive or USB external HDD. Changes to your PCs settings are usually required. Heres how to do it. Type cmd in Start menu search box and hit ShiftCtrlEnter. To keep things really easy, if you see text in upper case, it means this is what you type into the command prompt you dont need to type in upper case. Next type. DISKPARTthis loads the diskpart application we need to proceed. Then type. LIST DISKthe image above shows our 3. GB USB drive is listed as DISK 2so you have to type. SELECT DISK 2 your USB Drive may have a different number, dont follow exactly this text it depends on your usb driveYou will get a successful response Disk 2 is now the selected diskNext we want to clean the USB drive. Type CLEANyou will get a successful response Disk. Part succeeded in cleaning the disk. After the drive is cleaned follow the list in the image above detailed below in list order you can also note the successful text responses from the OS as you enter each command. SELECT DISK 2 or what number your USB drive hasCREATE PARTITION PRIMARYSELECT PARTITION 1. ACTIVEFORMAT FSNTFSFormatting can take a little time depending on the size of the drive, our 3. GB unit took about 1. Next type ASSIGNEXIT DISK PART will exitType D CD BOOT substitute the D if necessary with the letter of your Windows 7 DVD drivethen key. CD BOOTthen. BOOTSECT. EXE NT6. 0 E substitute the E if necessary with the letter of your now ready USB drive we are telling the system to create a boot sector file on the USB drive. Now you can exit the command prompt and copy all the files on the Windows 7 DVD to the USB drive. Once this step is finished youll be ready to boot from this drive, all you need to do is configure your motherboard bios setup to boot first from USB rather than hard drive or optical drive. If you dont know how to do this, refer to your specific motherboard manual or search the internet. Now, Windows 7 installation should take between 4. DVD disc. Last step Drink a cup of tea, from now on you can do this again and again. How to Create a Bootable UEFI USB Flash Drive for Installing Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8. Click here to read the entire tutorial. Boot Hirens Boot CD HBCD from USB as an ISO file. A simple and useful guide to easily install Windows 7 on USB flash drives and external hard drivers.