How to install Vista from a USB/Flash stick!

Posted on March 16, 2007 at 4:49 pm

I just read this article off ComputerWorld and this seems like it’s really going to be kickass for System Admins! There seems to be a way to install Vista straight from a USB stick (your computer’s BIOS will have to support booting from a USB drive), which would be a good bit faster than installing from a CD drive, almost 50% faster according to ComputerWorld.

This is great for a small IT shop where you may not necessarily have OS images setup to quickly replace out a person’s computer in case of a crash. And reinstalling almost always takes a good couple of hours, so if the installation time can be cut in half, it could provide a good benefit for lots of small companies!

However, the only catch is that the computer must be a Vista PC. If you try to boot to the USB drive from an XP PC, it won’t work because XP’s command line tools are not familiar with the instructions required to read the USB drive. So if you have a set of blank computers with no OS installed, the first time around you will have to install Vista via the CD. However, if you’ve got computers with Vista on them already, then you’re fine.

ComputerWorld goes into great detail on how to do use this feature:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013119&source=rss_topic125

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» Filed Under Windows Vista