I've been wanting to create one of these for ages, mostly to install Vista on to DVDLess Laptops and I spotted Jorke doing an OS from his USB Memory stick, ok, so just how did you create it??  Well here's what you need to do!!

Format the USB stick as NTFS

Make USB Volume Active

Load up an (elevated) command prompt window

Run diskpart.exe and then set your drive and partition to point to the stick. Make sure you set the partition as Active.

Do this by:-

  1. list volume (to determine the volume number for your drive, in my case 2)
  2. Select volume 2
  3. active

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Create Boot Sector

There's a tool in Vista called bootsect.exe. Cant find it? Its on the Vista DVD itself in the Boot directory.

Run bootsect /nt60 <drive letter of your USB drive>

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Copy over Vista and Boot Files

From the Vista DVD copy over the

  • Boot directory
  • Sources directory and
  • the files in the root directory

and you should be good to go!!

hmmm, now for a nice speedy install on my DVDless ASUS Eee PC 1000H, which btw rocks!!

Dave