Discussion on:

Transfer a Windows 8 ISO to a bootable USB flash drive

With many of the new notebook PCs shipping without DVD drives, having a bootable USB flash drive that you can use for installing an operating system is almost mandatory isn't it?

Thanks for creating this tutorial.

Thanks for sharing this. I was wondering if it might be possible to load more than one ISO on the flash drive so that after it boots you could choose which OS you wanted to install, say Windows 7 or Windows 8? That would be really convenient to be able to install multiple operating systems from one source.

Apparently YUMI Multiboot USB Creator will let you do that (I haven't tried yet).

Have a look at "Step 2" and the comments in this article:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/218920-macrium-reflect-create-bootable-rescue-usb-drive.html?filter

I have used YUMI a fair bit over the last few years. I have a bootable HDD with a couple of Linux distro's as well as Ghost, Hiren's and other bootable tools. This works well when needing to backup a faullty windows install. The only downside is you can only have one copy of the Windows 7/8 installation files on the bootable HDD. Unless this has changed with a recent update.

This is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog, especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the leisure here! Keep up the good work.
Guys Visit this also http://www.windows8lab.com/

Fabulous article, Greg. I have been looking for this on the Microsoft website for quite a while. Even spent a couple of hours last week going in circles without finding the link you've given us. And I'm a partner!

I will never again burn a DVD, label it, and keep them all organized, when I can just keep the latest installables on disk, and load them onto a flash drive when I need it.

How often have we come to do an instal only to find that the DVD drive doesn't work? I've yet to find a functioning computer whithout a working USB port.

Q: Will this work on all modern Microsoft software: Server 2012, Project, Link Server, System Manager, Office. for example?
Does it work for other Windows apps: Adobe, Quickbooks, etc.?

Instead of installing Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool Setup Wizard, I prefer to use the UNETBOOTIN tool. That should be easier to use. Does anybody know if that works?

Too bad Windows 8 does not install next to other releases... quite arrogant.

Hey,
I've been trying without luck (so far) to install Windows 8 on my UEFI system. The USB has to be formatted with the file system set to FAT32 in order for the UEFI bios to recognize it as valid or it defaults to legacy and I can't install Windows using the GPT partition format.

So NTSF is not compatible with UEFI, and FAT32 as you must know has a file size limit of 2GB. The problem being that in the sources folder of the Windows 8 DVD is a file called "install.wim" that weighs 4.3GB, so it fails to be copied when I try to use the utility (Universal-USB-Installer) and the Microsoft utility (Windows7-USB-DVD-tool) converts the partition to NTFS making this a total bust for me. Any suggestions?

nice one,,hope it work's to me,,this is the latest way.,,im waiting for this thanks any why i try now to my laptop hop it works,,

Great article Greg, good to see some useful information being put on the blogs please keep it coming.

Thanks a lot!!! Was struck up with Automatic repair failed problem in Windows 8!!! Now i could reboot again using my USB and reset the system again!!!