Install Windows 8, 8.1 or 7 from a USB Flash drive

Windows is sold in the form of DVDs and downloadable ISOs. The Windows DVD can be put into an optical drive for easy installation. However, with the advent of ultra portable devices and tablets that do not have optical drives, installing Windows from the setup DVD becomes a problem. The only solution for these devices is to install Windows from a USB device such as a flash drive.

There are many other reasons why despite having an optical drive, you might want a bootable USB device for installing Windows. One is that installing Windows from a flash drive is a lot faster than that from a DVD. Creating a flash drive for installing Windows is not as simple as copying the setup files to it as it will not be bootable. To make it bootable, you need to use special software.

There are many third party software to create bootable USB devices but given the fact that most people aren't comfortable with third party software, Microsoft has released an application called Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool. Although the program's name makes it feel that it only supports Windows 7, that isn't really the case. It works well for preparing a bootable USB device for installing Windows 8 andWindows 8.1.