WinToFlash -- Make Bootable USB Installers for Windows

What is WinToFlash

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 also 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.

WinToFlash is a free and easy to use application that does something very useful: it helps you create a bootable USB installer for your Windows operating system. It basically takes your Windows installation disk and ports it to an USB stick.

Additional information on WinToFlash is available here.

The problem with having a Windows installation disk on a CD or DVD is that the aforementioned CD or DVD could get damaged. You could crack the disk or you could scratch it badly, thus making it unusable. Another problem is that it can be a bother to walk around with a CD or DVD in your pocket – especially when you take into consideration the fact that instead of a cumbersome CD or DVD, you could walk around with a tiny USB drive (or USB stick or Flash drive or whatever else you want to call it).

 




















It is a lot more convenient to walk around with an USB installer for Windows instead of a CD or DVD. USB sticks are easier to carry around and they don’t get scratches on them which make them unusable. Those two facts alone are reason enough for me to want to ditch a Windows CD or DVD and move to an USB stick instead.

There is a very simple way to do so: get the right piece of software and you can easily turn a Windows CD or DVD to an USB installer. That “right piece of software” is the Novicorp-developed and appropriately named WinToFlash. What this application does is it takes the contents of a Windows installation CD or DVD and moves them to an USB stick, turning that stick into a bootable USB installer for Windows. So instead of using a CD or DVD to install the Microsoft-developed Windows operating system, you can use the USB stick instead.

The functionality the WinToFlash has to offer is an exceptional fact on its own. What I also found to be exceptional is the fact that accessing the functionality WinToFlash has to offer is a very straightforward matter. You would think that creating an USB installer to replace your Windows installation disk would be a big pain in the unmentionables and for that reason you would be tempted to avoid performing such a task. You don’t have to stay with your classic Windows installation disk because you think it’s hard to set up an USB installer. The simple truth of the matter is that it is a piece of cake with WinToFlash. The application is user friendly and thanks to its wizard you will be done in no time.

It must be mentioned here that the application is free only for personal use. If you like WinToFlash and want to support its development, consider getting a Personal License for a mere $5. Get a license and you will no longer see the ads.

IT professionals who need extra features can purchase a Professional License. Businesses who want to use WinToFlash must purchase a Business License.

How To Boot From a USB Device?

You might want to boot from a USB device, like an external hard drive or a flash drive, for many different reasons.

When you boot from a USB device, what you're actually doing is running your computer with the operating system that's installed on the USB device. When you start your computer normally, you're running with the operating system installed on your hard drive - Windows, Linux, etc.

Follow these easy steps to boot from a flash drive, an external hard drive, or some other bootable USB device.

Difficulty: Easy

Time Required: Booting from a USB device usually takes less than 10 to 20 minutes.

Here's How:

1. Change the BIOS boot order so the USB device option is listed first. The BIOS is rarely setup this way by default.

If the USB boot option is not first in the boot order, your PC will start "normally" (i.e. boot from your hard drive) without even looking at any boot information that might be on your USB device.

Note: After setting your USB device as the first boot device, your computer will check it for boot information each time your PC starts. Leaving your computer configured this way shouldn't cause problems unless you plan on leaving the bootable USB device attached all the time.

2. Attach the USB device to your computer via any available USB port.

Note: Creating a bootable flash drive or configuring an external hard drive as bootable is a task in itself. Chances are you made it to my instructions here because you know whatever USB device you have should be bootable after properly configuring BIOS..

3. Restart your computer.

4. Watch for a Press any key to boot from external device... message.

On some bootable devices, you may be prompted with a message to press a key before the computer will boot to the flash drive or other USB device.

If you do nothing, your computer will check for boot information on the next boot device in the list in BIOS (see Step 1) which will probably be your hard drive.

Note: Most of the time when trying to boot to a USB device there is no key-press prompt. The USB boot process usually starts immediately.5.

5. Your computer should now boot from the flash drive or USB based external hard drive.

Note: What happens now depends on what the bootable USB device was intended for. If you're booting to an old version of MS-DOS on a flash drive, MS-DOS will load. If you're booting to the DSL version of Linux, it will start. You get the idea.

If you tried the above steps but your computer did not boot from the USB device, check out some of the tips mentioned in video