Making a bootable Windows Vista installing USB drive is far simpler than doing so for Windows XP because the utility is built into the operating system and can be deployed from the Command Prompt itself. All you would need is a computer running the Windows Vista operating system, the original Windows Vista installation DVD and at least a 4 GB USB flash drive. Follow the simple steps ahead to make your own Windows Vista bootable USB drive.
Step 1 : Start Windows Vista, insert the pen drive into the computer's USB port. Start Command Prompt, type 'diskpart' and press [Enter].
Step 2 : Type 'list disk' and press[Enter]. Carefully note down the USB flash drive's disk number listed here. In this case it would be 'Disk 1'
Step 3 : Type 'Select disk 1' and press[Enter]. Here the Diskpart utility is instructed to choose the disk 1 as the drive to be worked on.
Step 4 : Type 'Clean' and press[Enter]. This command clears out all the information of the volumes, partitions, boot sectors and the MBR from the USB flash drive.
Step 5 : Type 'Create partition primary' and press [Enter]. This command will create a primary partition on the USB flash drive.
Step 6 : Type 'Select partition 1' and press [Enter]. This command instructs the Diskpart utility to select the newly created partition.
Step 7 : Type 'Active' and press[Enter]. This command will make the current partition (primary) active to enable the USB flash drive to boot from.
Step 8 : Type 'Format fs=fat32' and press [Enter]. This command formats the selected drive partition using the FAT32 file system.
Step 9 : Type 'Assign' and press [Enter]. This command assigns a drive letter to the newly formatted partition. As there is no drive letter specified in the command line, the next available drive letter is assigned to the drive.
Step 10 : Exit from the Dskpart utility using the 'exit' command and pressing [Enter]. Now insert the Windows vista DVD in the optical drive and type the command 'xcopy e:\*.* /s /e /f F:\' and press [Enter]. this command will dump all the contents of the Windows Vista DVD onto the USB flash drive. Your USB drive is now ready to install Windows Vista on any computer. Just set the boot sequence in the BIOS of the system to boot from the USB, insert the USB flash drive into the ccomputers USB port and turn on the computer. Follow the regular installation for Windows Vista.
