USB Bootable

Im having some problems with my laptop....ongoing issues that i made worse lol

I want to make a bootable USB with Vista on it.
My DVD drive has decided it no longer wants to work and the OS is messing about and missing files (lite version).

I want to reinstall vista on my laptop, but can only use the USB to do this, because the DVD drive is buggered.

Anyone know an easy way of doing this?

For some reason i cannot format the USB drive to NTFS? Only FAT32....apparently it needs to be NTFS

Google is your friend.

www.intowindows.com...

This guide works, I've used it. Enjoy!

(Says Windows 7, will work for Vista and much more too.)

reply to post by TinkerHaus


Nice one, il give that a go


GRRRR got to "CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY" and it said i dont have enough room lol....16bg usb!!!
So i skipped that....got to the FORMAT part....and its just sat on 0% lol....stupid computer!!!


EDIT: No worries....sorted that haha, had to clean the drive again Durgh
Taking forever to format to NTFS though A few seconds..hmmmmm i can see this taking some time haha

reply to post by loves a conspiricy


Once you have a USB Windows installer, it's best to just keep it because preparing the drive to install takes as much time as the install itself. When you start the install though, you'll see it's about 50x faster than installing from DVD.

reply to post by TinkerHaus


I decided to use windows 7

There is a tool on that page you suggested, that does it all for you It formatted in about 10 seconds, and is now copying all the files to the USB

www.intowindows.com...

Seems to be the way to go lol

If you get any problems with the windows USB working, have a go at this; unetbootin.sourceforge.net...
It doesn't setup a windows USB boot stick. Instead, GNU/Linux on a FAT32 filesystem.

Even if your not familiar with Linux, its worth having a USB lying around in the event you need to save some files.
Unetbootin even downloads the disc image for you automatically.

Not sure how the windows USB-boot works (runs the installer only?) But in this case with unetbootin/linux you can boot into a full functional desktop without actually touching your harddrive.

I would get a small external USB hard drive and clone your computer drive to it.

If you have a drive problem on your computer then you can use the clone to replace everything by cloning and use your computer off the external drive till you have time to clone a replacement drive.(i do mine at night while sleeping)

This is a must of you have a computer with no OS disk. and this is the way most stores sell computers now.

Set up the computer the way you like it and with the programs you like and clone. Then reclone every couple months so you keep up to date on changes.

This will save you a lot of time in the future and save you a lot of money taking it to a shop to get it fixed.

I use maxblast 5 for my cloning
But Acronis® True Image™ Home 2012.is another good one but it cost a few dollars. and it give you a auto backup along with cloning