Want to Install Windows from a Flash Drive?
Usually most of the articles my colorful group of friends post about on Twitter and Facebook can be quite off topic however today I came across an article that made me just about fall out of my chair. I have spent many a night reconditioning troubled computer systems (laptops, desktops, netbooks, etc…) and my absolute favorite is when I need to re-install Windows but there is no optical drive to load the installation CD into. Normally I just bypass this through a couple creative tricks and load everything over the network. This of course makes my network a little crazy for a while not to mention having to tie up one of my other computers to act as the media host. As of today, I don’t believe I will have any more of these headaches as there is now a simply way to turn your USB memory stick (flash drive) into the equivalent of a Windows installation CD. Novicorp’s WinToFlash makes it all possible, and what makes it even better… IT’S FREE!
From the Novacorp website:
There may come a day that optical drives are as hard to find as 5.25 floppy drives are today.
WinToFlash starts a wizard that will help pull over the contents of a windows installation CD or DVD and prep the USB drive to become a bootable replacement for the optical drive. It can alsow do this with your LiveCD.
You don’t have to worry about scratches on the disc or misplacing your original media discs once you transfer their contents to the flash drive. The optical drive is quickly becoming a thing of the past, especially in office environments, as media is shifted to the cloud.
A special thank you goes out to Rick Broida over at BNET (website) and Lee Mathews at Download Squad (website).
I want to thank you very much not only for this post but also for all your previous efforts. I find your site to be extremely interesting. I will be coming back often!