How to make USB bootable and install Windows 2000/XP/2003 [Source Code included]

Posted by arvindk on January 2, 2010

As we all know that Microsoft already launched a tool for making USB bootable and install Windows 7 via USB but still we have to go for CD or DVD boot menu in order to install Windows 2000/XP/2003. But here is a way for making possible to install via USB the same. Just follow some simple steps while fulfilling few pre requisites.

Pre requisites to be fulfilled:

Windows 2000/Xp/2003 source installation files.
WinSetupUSB tool
USB Storage Drive (PEN DRIVE) of atleast 1 GB

Steps to follow:

First of all get the tool downloaded and install it from here. Here are the steps of installation with screen shots.

Install 1:

Install 2:

Install 3:

Install 4:

Install 5:

Install 6:

Now after the installation finishes, simply plug your pen drive and ensure that it is ready.

You can see below the GUI of tool after its installation. Just have a look over it and option being provided by it.

First of all browse for the source of installation files of Windows 2000/XP/2003.
Now USB disk selection is for selecting the USB drive which is to made bootable for installation.
Either your USB get automatically reognized else click on refresh for it. If your USB disk is not displayed make sure it’s formatted and has MBR and an active partition.
Use the buttons, launching HP USB format utility or PEtoUSB for disks < 2GB and format your USB disk. Click Refresh button to refresh USB disk information.
Uncheck the check box entitled as: Copy setup boot files only.

GUI:

PE2USB:

As you select the appropriate USB drive click on start and the USB will get formatted and ready to become bootable. Now simply click on the GO button from main Window of tool It’ll take few minutes and following confirmation you’ll get:

Now reastart the PC and keep USB plugged in. Choose boot from USB and follow the 3-Steps Installation.

Start from USB 3 times while keeping USB plugged in for whole time. The 3-Steps installtion process includes:

Text mode part of setup
GUI mode part of setup
Start Windows for first time

Ensure that USB is always plugged and do not power off in between.

Source code of the tool can be seen where it gets installed as it is an open source product from MSFN.

Thats all !!! Happy Windows Computing !

How To Make Bootable USB

Having a bootable USB is very essential, especially if you are a Netbook user. Using bootable USB to install an operating system (OS) not only makes the installation faster, but also saves a DVD.

Creating or using an USB drive to install Windows operating systems is very easy if you follow the below mentioned steps.

If you are planning to use bootable USB to install Windows 7 or Vista please refer our guides:

Install Windows 7/Vista using bootable USB guide

And also, you can refer install Windows 7 on Acer Aspire One guide

Coming back to bootable USB guide, here we assume that you are using either Vista or Windows 7 to create a bootable USB.

1. Insert your USB (4GB+ preferable) stick to the system and backup all the data from the USB as we are going to format the USB to make it as bootable.

2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, navigate to Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.

3. When the Command Prompt opens, enter the following command:

DISKPART and hit enter.

LIST DISK and hit enter.

Once you enter the LIST DISK command, it will show the disk number of your USB drive. In the below image my USB drive disk no is Disk 1.

4. In this step you need to enter all the below commands one by one and hit enter. As these commands are self explanatory, you can easily guess what these commands do.

SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS

(Format process may take few seconds)

ASSIGN

EXIT

Don’t close the command prompt as we need to execute one more command at the next step. Just minimize it.

5. Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and note down the drive letter of the optical drive and USB media. Here I use “D” as my optical (DVD) drive letter and “H” as my USB drive letter.

6. Go back to command prompt and execute the following commands:

D:CD BOOT and hit enter. Where “D” is your DVD drive letter.

CD BOOT and hit enter to see the below message.

BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 H:

(Where “H” is your USB drive letter)

7. Copy Windows DVD contents to USB.

You are done with your bootable USB. You can now use this bootable USB as bootable DVD on any computer that comes with USB boot feature (most of the current motherboards support this feature).

Note that this bootable USB guide will not work if you are trying to make a bootable USB on XP computer.

Tags: Bootable USB

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Free Utility To Make Your USB Pen Drive Bootable

Submitted by admin on Mon, 07/14/2008 - 08:31

If you are an fairly advanced computer user, at times you may need to boot from devices other then the default hard-disk, mainly to troubleshoot virus infections and other critical operating-system related issues, I had shared tips on how to make bootable cd for performing advance system tasks on windows. Today I will share few utilities enabling you to create bootable USB pen drives with ease, you need to have Motherboard/BIOS with USB boot support for this to work.

MakeBootable is an free and simple-to-use utility to make your Pen Drive act as a boot-up disk without erasing any data on the device. It consists of a single executable file and requires no installation, However the utility will only work on USB device's using Phison’s chip solution and FAT file-system only (you can re-format your drives to FAT easily).

Direct Download : Make_bootable.zip (465Kb)

If the above utility fails to recognize your USB drive you can download and use the HP USB Format Utility and HP USB Boot utility, They work with other brands of flash drives as well, The best software for creating bootable flash drives with the most extensive support of drives and advance options would be "FlashBoot" from PrimeExpert but its not free and costs around $31, you can download and try the demo version.

There are quite a few other manual methods to make usb devices bootable as discussed here, once you succeed in making your USB drive bootable using any of the method discussed above, You need to change the boot-up setting in the system BIOS as described below to boot using your portable device:

With your device inserted, restart the machine.
Enter the BIOS setup menu to change the boot device setting.
If the boot-up files are created in the USB drive, select USB-HDD or USB-ZIP (preferred). If the boot-up files are created in the floppy drive of your device, select USB-FDD (for Pen Drive that supports security mode).

Save and exit the BIOS setup. You should be able to boot up with you USB device.

Did You Know?

Pages

Saturday, February 2, 2013

How To Make Bootable USB!

How to make USB bootable and install Windows 2000/XP/2003 [Source Code included]

How To Make Bootable USB

Free Utility To Make Your USB Pen Drive Bootable

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