I’ve tried researching on how to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive before and when I finally managed to do it, the whole process is so unbearably slow that I thought I would NEVER install it from a USB flash drive. Recently there has been many articles about installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive and I’ve decided to give it another try and see if there is any improvement on the speed. Installing Windows from USB has its advantage which is you don’t need to worry if the DVD drive cannot read the disc or if there is any scratches on the Windows installation DVD, and it is more convenient to carry around your USB flash drive rather than a DVD disc. Moreover, a lot of new compact small laptops or desktops doesn’t even have a CD/DVD drive. Other than that, you can even save useful software setups such as Firefox, Windows Live Messenger, 7-Zip, Orbit Downloader and etc into the USB drive so you can install them once Windows installation has been completed.
I will show you two ways (manual and automatic) on how to install Windows 7 using your USB drive.
Before we start, make sure you have at least a 4GB USB flash drive. Windows 7 installation files takes up around 3GB of space. The manual way
1. Insert your USB flash drive.
2. Hit WIN+R, type cmd and click OK.
3. Type diskpart and hit ENTER
4. Type list disk, hit ENTER and identify the disk number for your USB flash drive. You MUST be very sure of this or else you’ll be formatting the wrong drive later on. If you have only one hard drive, then normally your USB flash drive will be disk 1.
5. Type select disk 1 and hit ENTER
6. Type clean and hit ENTER
7. Type create partition primary and hit ENTER
8. Type select partition 1 and hit ENTER
9. Type active and hit ENTER
10. Type format fs=fat32 and hit ENTER
11. Type assign and hit ENTER
12. Type exit and hit ENTER
13. Insert the Windows 7 installation DVD disc and copy everything from the DVD to your USB flash drive.
14. Boot up your computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive.
The automatic way
There is a software called WinToFlash that does everything above automatically. All you need to do is run the program, set the location of the Windows 7 installation disc and the destination of your USB flash drive.
1. Download the latest version of WinToFlash
2. Extract and run WinToFlash.exe
3. Click the big check button to start Windows setup transfer wizard.
4. Click Next
5. Specify the locations of Windows files and USB drive then click Next. The Windows files path if the drive letter of your DVD drive and the USB drive is the drive letter of your USB flash drive.
6. Select “I Accepted the terms of the license agreement” and click Continue.
7. Click OK to start formatting your USB flash drive and the files will be automatically transferred from your Windows 7 install disc to your USB flash drive.
8. Click Next when finished copying and boot up the computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive. Your computer hardware specification plays a part on the time taken to install Windows. I managed to complete installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive with only 17 minutes and my desktop’s specification is Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz, 2GB ram, 7200RPM 160GB SATA hard drive and MSI 945P Platinum mainboard. When I time installing Windows 7 using DVD, it took 22 minutes. So on my desktop computer, it is 22% faster installing Windows using USB flash drive compared to DVD.
f you’ve requested for the free license of USB Safely Remove, then probably you have tried the new feature which is the “Return Device Back!”. After you had stopped the device, but still did not unplug it, sometimes it is quite useful to return it back into the system. For example if you remembered that you forgot to write a file to the external drive. In order to do it, you have to physically reconnect the device, however sometimes it’s quite inconvenient to do if the device is connected to the rear panel of the computer.
USB Safely Remove claims to be the first Windows program that allows you to return stopped device back and I thought that there isn’t a way to do it without using a software. Thanks to Ed for his valuable tip, we can now remount the ejected USB device with a few simple mouse clicks without reinserting (unplug and insert) the USB device.
Here’s what you need to do to have the “return device back” feature without using USB Safely Remove software.
1. Right click My Computer and select Properties (or you can simultaneously press Win+Pause/Break key). In System Properties window, go to the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button. In Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can just click the Device Manager link located at the left hand sidebar when you are at the System Properties window.
2. Click View from the menu bar and select “Devices by Connection“.
3. Find the parent USB Root Hub of the USB device that has a yellow color exclamation mark. Right click on the USB Root Hub and select Disable. Again right click on the same USB Root Hub that you’ve just disabled and this time select Enable.
Voila! The drive letter has been returned back to My Computer and the autorun or autoplay window will appear if it is enabled. Since this can be done in Windows itself, Microsoft Windows development team should consider adding a feature to easily re-enable the drive after ejecting without unplugging and reinserting. This tip has been verified to work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and even the latest Windows 7. No doubt that unplug and reinsert it way faster than this method IF the USB port is easily accessible. If not, this method would save you from bending your back and trying to reach the back of the case.
Thanks Ed for sharing something that took him 2 years to discover!One of our forum member tangomouse has created a nice and simple tool called Re-Enable to help us re-enable disabled Task Manager, Registry Editor, Command Prompt, Folder Options and even System Restore configuration that is normally caused by virus. Honestly the tool that I’ve been using to do this is Remove Restriction Tool v1.03 but now the latest version of RRT has grown so much that I’d say it’s a little too bloated. I just needed a simple tool that does the job and doesn’t have all those flashy interface that sometimes I can’t run on a virus infected computer. This project started off to help another forum member but somehow it ended up in Softpedia and now in this blog.
As you can see at the screenshot below, it’s a no brainer to use this tool. All you need to do is put a check on the checkbox that you want to enable and click the Enable button. The disable feature will be instantly enabled or if not, a reboot would do the trick. Please make sure that the computer is free from virus or else the changes made by this tool will not be effective and there is no end to enabling/disabling competition between you and the virus.
Re-enable is coded in .NET but doesn’t need .NET installed because .NET dependencies are included in the program making it fully portable. That is why a single file is in 36.7MB. However if you working on a computer that already have .NET framework installed, then you can just use the 64KB version instead.
This product was last tested in the Softpedia Labs on 1st of September 2009 by Cosmin Anton and they guarantee that Re-Enable Portable 1.0.0.0 is 100% Clean, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including but not limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors. Re-Enable is only in version 1 and I am sure that it can be improved with a couple more features without making it too bloated.
[ Download Re-Enable With .NET | Without .NET ]
I will be going for my honeymoon next week and I’ve done a lot of research to prepare myself so that I won’t get really lost or waste a lot precious time when I am traveling in Europe with my wife. I will be bringing my Garmin Nuvi GPS 
along with me so that I know where is my current location. The Point of Interest feature in my GPS is also very helpful in finding nearby hotels, restaurants and etc. Another important gadget that will guide me along the way is my newly bought HTC Touch 3G PDA. At first I wanted to buy a simple and cheap Nokia phone but it lacks of third party software, so I went for a PDA instead. It’s running on Windows Mobile 6.1 and there are tons of software for it.
I know that most Europeans travel around Europe using trains and subways. I don’t want to go there then only learn about it so I looked for a software that can maybe help me find my way in public transport systems in Europe and I found MetrO.
Métro is your free guide on PDA (Palm, PocketPC, iPhone, BlackBerry, Smartphone, Symbian) to public transport systems worldwide with over 400 cities covered now. Other than that, updating the software and city files is easy when you install another software called MétrUp. It is a tool that connects to the free update service and downloads the latest versions of your Métro program & city files. You select which cities you want to update (select only one if your connection to the internet is slow) and the programs check if a new version is available. When it finds one, it downloads the file to your device and automatically update the city. If you already have the latest release, no transfer occurs.
Installing MetrO on your Windows Mobile PDA is very easy. Just download the correct package and run setup.exe which will bring up ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center to install MetrO. Wait, it’s not finished yet because you have manually copy the cities .PDB file to your mobile. You can either transfer all cities which is located in ALL folder or select a few from the list. As for me, I only select the cities that I’ll be in so that I won’t waste the memory space on my PDA and also it loads faster when searching for cities file.
ust put in where you are and where you want to go and the software takes you there. There are a lot of small buttons with no description on it. So make sure you get familiar with the software MetrO before you use it. The best place to learn about how to use MetrO is at the official user guide webpage.
[ Download MetrO ]
