Free Utility To Create A Bootable USB To Install Windows 7, Vista & Server 2008

There are many Tutorials in the net about How to Create a Bootable USB Drive To Install Windows 7, Windows Vista. And only a few of them are working correctly. Following these guides are time consuming. But creating a USB Drive to Install Windows 7 or Vista will become really handy when the DVD drive has problems. Windows Vista or Windows 7 DVD's loses its life after prolonged use. More often they get scratched. So here the USB Drives with Windows 7 or vista comes into play. Earlier i had created some guides to Create a bootable Pendrive or USB to install Windows Vista and Install Windows 7 from a Pendrive (Working 100 %)/ How to create a bootable Pendrive to install Windows 7. But following these were a bit time consuming and a difficult for new users. I came across a utility called Bootable USB from AskVG. I This utility was created by one of the AskVG readers. What is interesting about Bootable USB is that it automates the process of creating a bootable USB Drive to Install Windows 7,Vista & Server 2008.
Windows Users dont have to type the step by step commands, copying files from one location to another etc from now on. With Bootable USB its very simple.

Bootable USB Requirements

• A USB Drive 4GB or Greater.


• Windows Vista, Server 2008 or 7 ISO image or DVD


• Windows Vista (SP1 or SP2), Server 2008 or 7 installed

So you need to keep in mind that you must already have windows 7 or vista installed in your PC in order to create a Bootable USB Drive.

The utility is portable,free and is small as 0.99 MB.

How to Use Bootable USB To Create A Bootable USB To Install Windows 7,Vista

Bootable USB follows a four step process.

• Check USB drive (To check whether your USB drive is connected or not)


• Format USB Drive


• Choose DVD or ISO image (To copy the needed files to USB drive)


• Start the process to create bootable USB drive

Bootable USB automatically runs the required commands in Windows 7 / vista fro making the USB drive bootable. All you need to do is to follow these four simple steps.

Note: Windows XP users cant Run this utility. If you try to run it Bootable USB will show a message saying that " Unsupported Opperating System. Supported Operating systems are Windows Vista (SP1 or later) ". On Vista with no SP there is an error diskpart which is solved later by microsft on SP1 and later.

And before selecting the DVD or ISO image of the Windows 7 or Vista installation make sure it is free of errors.
Bootable USB works with 64 bit versions of Windows 7, Vista too. Bootable USB is a nice and sleek application that is of great use in creating A Bootable USB To Install Windows 7.

Download Bootable USB (Skydrive)

Friends, Show up your Opinions about this nice utility.

How to Find Out The Read & Write Speed of USB Flash Drives/Hard Drives Correctly

Portability, accessibility, affordability and portability have contributed to the wide use of USB Flash Drives as a storage medium now. Most of us today own a USB Flash Drives. The storage capacity is not the prime factor for a USB Flash Drives to consider it to be good. There are many other factors such as durability, price and Performance that comes into account. Among this three the Performance comes first because performance is related with time eg. if we choose two USB Flash Drives a 4 GB and 16 GB. The 16 GB Flash Drive will be always behind the 4 GB Flash Drive when it comes to performance in most cases. So our job gets done quickly with the 4 GB Flash Drive. Here i will tell how to Test/Find out the Read and Write Speed of any USB Flash Drive easily and accurately.

Most of the people analyze the potential of a USB Flash Drive just by seeing its design and price. But this is wrong as some Flash Drives will be really slow. So we must be able to choose the correct USB Flash Drive which performs really well and give good bang for the buck.

How to Test/Find out the Read and Write Speed of any USB Flash Drive/Hard Drives

USBDeview is a nice software that will help to Test/find out the Speed of your USB Flash Drives. USBDeview was meant for finding out which all USB drives are used on a computer. The speed testing feature comes with it.

The software comes with a very simple interface and is easy to use for beginners too. When you run the software it will list all the USB devices connected to your computer.
To Test/Find out the Read and Write Speed of any USB Flash Drive just right click on the required flash drive from the shown list and select Speed Test.

How USBDeview to Test/Check the Read and Write Speed of USB Flash Drive/Hard Drives

USBDeview checks the read/ write speed of the USB drives by sequential read and write operations because the drive shows the maximum speed when copying a single file than copying multiple files of same size. For eg. Copying a 2 GB single file is much faster than copying a lot of files with all together make 2 GB and generlly this is the case with almost all storage devices.

After the speed of your USB device is recorded by USBDeview an option will be displayed called "Publish Test Result ". Clicking this will submit your Read/Write Speed of your USB device with their records which have information submitted by various users of USBDeview. So you can easily compare your device with other USB devices too. USBDeview is free, portable and small in size about (59.13 kb).

Download USBDeview

How to Encrypt/Password Protect USB Flash Drives (Pendrives)

Here is a small tutorial on How to Encrypt/ Password protect your Pendrives / USB Flash Drives.

Most of us today have a Pendrive / USB Flash drive. We carry the important data on the USB flash drive. But have you ever thought how secure is that data we stored on our USB Flash drive/ pendrive ? We might have stored important data on the USB  flash drive/ pendrive that we don't want others to see. The Perfect solution to this is to password protect the pendrive or USB flash drive. A small and sleek freeware utility will help you to password protect your USB  flash drive or pendrive and make it secure.

TrueCrypt is an excellent utility that can password protect the USB flash drive / pendrives, your hard disk’s and other devices too. If you only need a small portion in your USB  flash drive / pendrive that needs to be encrypted, you can do that too with ease using TrueCrypt.

Here are the steps to Encrypt/ Password Protect your Flash Drives / Pendrives

• First Download the TrueCrypt utility from here.



• Install the TrueCrypt utility to the pendrive / flash drive. Better to install TrueCrypt on its own default folder in the pendrive / USB flash drive.



• Click the “Create Volume” button from its window. TrueCrypt will now TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard Window.



• Leave the First Option “  Create an encrypted file container  “selected and click on Next.



• Here also leave the first option “ Standard TrueCrypt Volume “ selected and proceed to Next.



• In the next window press “ Select File “ and go to your pendrive’s / flash drive’s location. Enter a file name and click save. This file now created by TrueCrypt on your USB Flash Drive / Pendrive will be the store house of the files that we encrypt later. Click on Next.



• Under Encryption Algorithm leave it as AES on and select  Whirlpool from Hash Algorithm and click Next.



• Now, Enter the space you need for keeping the encrypted files and click on next and enter a good password ad click on next.



• Click on “Format”.



• Now open TrueCrypt to select the are where the encrypted data needs to be mounted. Choose the “ Select Files ” option and now pick the encrypted file area in your USB Flash Drive / Pendrive and click Open .



• Choose an unused drive letter and press “Mount”. You will be now asked for the Password. Enter the correct Password and windows will mount you encrypted data in your USB Flash Drive / Pendrive  to the selected drive letter.



• You must click on “ Dismount” before taking / plugging out the USB Flash Drive / Pendrive  from your system.

That's it ! You can now be confident about your data in your USB Flash Drive / Pendrive .

Prevent PC Crash (Hangs) on connecting / plugging USB drives or devices

You may have faced a situation when your PC freeze/crash or hangs soon after you plug or insert a USB device or drives. And the problem is solved only after restarting the system after removing the USB drive or Device. This can be due to the old or dead device drivers residing in your operating system. Most probably, the hidden entries in the Device Manager in Windows could be the problem causing the system to hang while connecting the USB drive / device. So analyzing them can solve this problem easily.........

Here are the steps to do it.

Open Control panel.

Now go to System > Advanced > Environment variables.

Next create two new entries by clicking the " New button ".

Create the entry "Devmgr_show_details" and give its value as " 1 " and save the changes.

Next open the Device Manager and click on view > Show hidden devices.

Now delete all the entries related to the malfunctioning USB drive or device by right clicking the corresponding entry (entries) and select Uninstall.

You should never delete any other entries other than the hidden devices!

Finally restart your computer and you will no longer have trouble with your problematic USB drive or device.

Install Windows 7 or Windows Vista from a Pendrive / USB drive (Working 100 %) for XP users

I had written the tutorials to make a Pendrive / USB drive bootable for installing Windows Vista and Windows 7 from it. But the steps given in those tutorials worked for users using Windows Vista and Windows 7 only. So some of my visitors asked me for a solution since they were using Windows XP. (Thanks Miguel for bringing this to my notice).So Here is it.


First you have to format your pendrive / USB drive to NTFS format.
For that download this tool and format your pendrive in NTFS format. Don't use quick format option. Now follow the steps from step 14 on this tutorial to Install Windows 7 from Pendrive (Work for Windows Vista Too).

Format Pendrive or USB drive in NTFS Format and Prevent any Virus from Entering your Pendrive

NTFS file format offers more security and speed compared with the other file system's like FAT or FAT32. When you want to format a Pen drive or USB drive in NTFS file system Format actually you will not see any option in Windows by default to do it. When you right click on the Pen drive's icon and choose format option you will get only two options FAT and FAT32 to format the pendrive. So you can format your USB drive in those two formats only. So here is a way to format you Pendrive in NTFS file system format.

The best advantage of NTFS file system format is that data can be written to the pendrive only using our system i.e. by your pc only (the data is secure). So when we plug on to other system they can only read the drive and cant write to it since the pendrive is in NTFS file format. So we don't need to fear any virus from entering our pendrive.
Here's how to do it.

• Plug the USB drive or Pendrive to your PC.
• Now right click on MY Computer in Desktop and select Device Manager.
• Select Disk Drive and Expand it (+) and you can see your drive.
• Now right click on it and select Properties and go to the Policies Tab.
• Now activate the option showing Optimize For Performance and press OK .
• This will enable the pendrive to be used in NTFS file format. From now on you will get the option to format your Pendrive or USB drive in NTFS file format.

You will also notice a speed increase in writing and reading data with your pendrive, this is because the pendrive or USB drive is now optimized for performance mode.

Install Windows 7 Extremely Faster !!!

I have earlier wrote a post on How to install Windows 7 Using a Pendrive or USB drive. But here is a fast way (similar to the method i posted). You may have noticed Installation taking very long time and some times the installation stops by middle all this problems can occur if you use DVD. And whats more the more you Use that DVD drive the bad it will become and we know that. So why not avoid these things and go for a faster and error free installation of Windows. This post is for Experienced Windows Users. All you want is a Windows 7 ISO image and a Pendrive or USB drive with 4 G.B or Greater space. You can install Windows 7 very much faster than installing from a DVD.

Just format the Pendrive to Fat 32 format and copy all the contents of the ISO image using xcopy g:\ h:\ /g /h (here g: is the DVD drive and h: is the location of the Pendrive).

Now just boot from the thumb drive as usual (To boot from the pendrive set the first boot priority to the Pendrive from BIOS) and you will notice a faster and robust installation of Windows 7.

Install Windows 7 from a Pendrive (Working 100 %)/ How to create a bootable Pendrive to install Windows 7

Here is a small and working tutorial to install windows 7 from a bootable USB or Pendrive. These days most of them have a USB or Pendrive. So why don't you try this trick. Earlier i have posted on How to Install vista from a Pendrive. Installing Windows 7 using a pendrive is very much faster than that from DVD/CD. You just need to follow some small steps to do this. You can keep this pendrive/USB drive for future installation of Windows 7. If you are a beginner or dont want to get messed up by typing in all commands, here is a Free Utility To Create A Bootable USB To Install Windows 7, Vista & Server 2008. This tool will help you to automate the process of bootable pendrive's and you can install windows 7 from pendrive easily. If not you can follow this guide to install windows 7 from a pendrive.

Make sure you have a Pendrive or USB drive with a minimum of 4 GB space and you have the Windows 7 installation DVD. This tutorial is best suited if you have a Windows 7 DVD with you else you need to change it

1. Format the Pendrive or USB drive in NTFS format first.
2. From the start menu right click on the command prompt and select "Run as administrator".
3. Now type the following commands (Press enter key after each command).
4. diskpart. This is to open the disk partition program.
5. Now to show the list of drives type list disk.
6. You can see disk's listed there. Note down the disk number of your pendrive eg. Disk .
7. Now type SELECT DISK X (where X is the number you noted down for the pendrive from step 5)
8. Now type CLEAN.
9. Now type the following commands by pressing enter after each one.
10. CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
11. SELECT PARTITION 1 (Assuming your pendrive/ USB drive is 1).
12. ACTIVE
13. FORMAT FS=NTFS
14. ASSIGN
15. EXIT(Now the disk partition program will exit). Now we need to give some more commands.
16. Now insert the Windows 7 Installation DVD and to your DVD drive.
17. Here i am assuming DVD drive as G and Pendrive as I.(Change it accordingly).
18. Now type G:CD BOOT
    
19. Now type this command BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 I: to update your USB drive with bootmgr code.
20. Finally copy all the contents from the Windows 7 DVD to your Pendrive. Make sure you don't cause any errors.
21. Plug / Insert your pendrive to your PC and restart the system.
22. Now Enter the Bios system accordingly by pressing the key delete.(This may vary some times it will be F2 or F12. It depends on the type of your system. Any how during the start up your system will display which key to press to enter the Bios).
23. Now select the USB/ Pendrive as the first boot driver.(Set the first boot priority to USB drive.).
24. Now save the settings in Bios and restart and you will be able to Install Windows 7 using that pendrive.

If you liked it make a comment . Feel Free to ask if you have any doubts. I will Try my best to Help You.

How to Prevent/Protect your Pendrives and Harddisk's from autorun.inf virus

These day's it is normal to get affected by the autorun virus when we take our pendrives outside and plug into a another system. Guys, here is a way that can prevent your Pendrives and Hard disk's from being affected by the autorun.inf virus. Actually this trick will fool the autorun virus ie it will not allow the autorun virus to create the file named autorun.inf in the root directory of drives. If you want to use this trick make sure the pendrives and hard drives are free from the autorun virus because this trick is not to remove the virus if it is there but to prevent the drive from being affected by the virus in the future.

1. Use the command md autorun.inf on all of your drives.
2. This will create a folder named autorun.inf on the specified drive.So when the virus comes your system will prevent it from being regenerated as it will not allow two files by the same name in one place.
3. You should use the command md autorun.inf on all of your drives including your pendrive.
4. Now reboot your system.
5. Done!

If you want to get the command prompt option in right click menu just copy the following code to notepad and save it as command prompt here.reg.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd]

@="@%SystemRoot%\\system32\\shell32.dll,-22022"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command]

@=hex(2):63,00,6d,00,64,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,2f,00,6b,00,20,00,63,\

00,64,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,4c,00,22,00,00,00

Now, you will get the option command prompt in the context menu also.

Install Windows Vista from (using) Pendrive (100 % working)/ Create a bootable Pendrive or USB to install Windows Vista [updated]

Here's a small tutorial to make pendrives or USB drives bootable and to install Windows Vista using it. This trick come in handy if you don't have a DVD/CD drive. Installing from a pendrive will make Windows Vista installation very fast. Alternatively here is a Free Utility To Create A Bootable USB To Install Windows 7, Vista & Server 2008. This tool will help you to automate the process of bootable pendrive's and you can install windows vista from pendrive easily. If not you can follow this guide to install vista from pendrive.

1. First you need to format the pendrive or USB drive in NTFS format. (Make sure you are following this guide with windows vista installed)
   
2. This can be done by right clicking your pendrive icon and choosing format option.
   
3. Now from the start menu right click on command prompt and choose "Run as administrator".
   
4. Now type the following commands.
   
5. diskpart .The disk part program windows will open.
   
6. Then type list disk.This will show the list of disks in your computer.
   
7. Note down the disk number of your pendrive from the list eg. Disk 1.
8. Now type CLEAN.
9. Now type the following commands by pressing enter after each one.
10. CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
11. SELECT PARTITION 1 (Assuming your pendrive/ USB drive is 1).
12. ACTIVE
13. FORMAT FS=NTFS
14. ASSIGN
15. EXIT(Now the disk partition program will exit). Now we need to give some more commands.
16. Now insert the Windows Vista Installation DVD and to your DVD drive.
17. Here i am assuming DVD drive as G and Pendrive as I.(Change it accordingly).
18. Now type G:CD BOOT
    
19. Now type this command BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 I: to update your USB drive with bootmgr code.
20. Finally copy all the contents from the Windows Vista DVD to your Pendrive. Make sure you don't cause any errors.
21. Now set the boot priority to your pendrive from bios and you can proceed with the installation as normal.
    

Now vista can be installed on any pc with the help of this pen drive you have just created now.

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Get Vista's Ready Boost feature in XP

Windows Vista features a technology called the 'Ready Boost' which uses flash memory,SD cards,USB 2.0 drives or any flash storage device as disk cache or as a drive.This feature boost's reading and writing up to 80-100 times faster than the hard drives.This feature is integrated in Windows Vista by default.

Windows XP users also can enjoy this feature with a small software called eboostr.This software is available at a small price.So rather than upgrading to Vista it is worthy to go for this if your aim is Ready Boost.This application improves the system responsiveness and speeds up system booting and application launches.This software is compatible with all Ready Boost compatible USB drives.

Download eboostr

Repair Unaccessible Pendrives under two minutes

When you plug in your pen drive or mp3 player you are unable to access it and suddenly your system stops responding .Then it is due to the bad sectors in your pen drive that is due to memory pool corruption.I can give you a simple step to recover your drive.

• Plug in your pen drive or mp3 player.
• Don't access it .
• Now restart the system with the device plugged in your drive.
• During the booting process the 'check disk ' utility runs and scan your drive do not skip it wait for it to complete.
• After the system boots up you will be able to access your drive.

Note: If you have any virus on your pen drive it can affect your system. So your pen drive should be virus free.

Boost your USB/ Pendrive Speed/Increase the Speed of your Pendrive / USB

You may have noticed slow copy speeds with some pen drives. Here is a trick which help in increasing the speed or giving a speed boost to your pendrive.

• Plug in your USB Drive.
• Then Open My Computer> right-click on your USB Drive >click Properties.
• Select your USB drive Under Hardwares and choose Properties.
• You will see a dialog box saying " Optimize for quick removal".This option is selected by default.
• Select "Optimize for Performance"option.
• Now, remove USB drive and plug it again.
• Copy some files from the drive to your system or vice-versa. You can notice the speed increase.

This trick may some times create write errors.But it will come in handy while copying files larger than a size of 1GB.