Many of us more technically-inclined poeple have probably built our own Windows Home Server systems by now or are considering it. But one of the more tricky problems with building your own Home Server is how to install it. Sure there is picking up a spare DVD drive just to install Home Server intially, but most of us just remove it as soon as we’re done with it. And there are some of us without a spare DVD drive. Well, there is a a great solution to that. Using a USB Flash Drive. Not only can you just delete everything after you are done installing, but who doesn’t have a few laying around?
Want to know more? Well, here it is:
If you want to create a Windows Home Server Flash Drive, you will need a 2GB stick because the DVD takes 1.2GB of space. The Windows Home Server Restore Disk takes about 130MB so a 256MB stick or larger is preferred because of additional drivers and such. Windows Vista takes about 2.4GB for the 32-bit version and about 3.2GB for the 64-bit verions, so you are going to want to use a 4GB stick.
As a word of warning, older USB flash drives may not be bootable, and some older systems will not boot off of USB drives. Both of these can be check in either your motherboard’s documentation, or by checking BIOS.
Insert your USB Flash Drive into any computer with Windows Vista. Make sure that it installs it correctly and everything comes up fine. Now, make sure anything important is off of the drive because we are going to be formatting it in just a bit.
- Load an elevated command prompt (Start menu-> all programs -> accessories -> right click on “Command Prompt” and click on “Run as Administrator”).
- Type in “diskpart” and hit Enter.
- Next type each the follow commands in respective order at the “DISKPART>” command prompts. Note – this assumes that disk 2 is the USB flash drive (as it was on my system). You will need to replace the “2” in “select disk 2” with the disk number of your USB flash drive.
list disk
select disk 2
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
This should all come out looking like this:
After this is done, you can make the USB Flash Drive intaller for Windows Vista or Windows Home Server.
Windows Home Server
If you want to create an installer flash disk for Windows Home Server, find that Server Install Disk and copy its contents over to the USB Flash drive. This may take 20-30 minutes or longer. After this is done, you can also make the installer automated by creating a file called “qs.ini” on the flash drive. This has to be in the root directory else the installer will not find it. Create the file, and change the product key to yours and the server name to your desired name:
[Q Setup]
ProductKey=00000-00000-00000-00000-00000
ServerName=SERVER
This will now automatically install Windows Home Server on the computer when you boot off of it.
WHS Restore Disk
Easier thand WIndows Home Server, just copy the contents of the Windows Home Server Restore CD to the USB Flash Drive. Just boot from it, and you can restore any computer that can boot for USB drives. Great for that laptop with the burned out CD/DVD drive. Don’t forget to add drivers that you may need on this as the Restore console may need them.
Windows Vista
Not much different than Windows Home Server here. Just copy the contents of the DVD to the flash drive. After it is done copying, if you create a file called “PID.TXT” in “X:\sources\” where “X” is the flash drive, and change “value” to your product key, it won’t ask you for your key or which version of Vista you want to install:
[PID]
Value=00000-00000-00000-00000-00000
Done
You’re done, that is it. Just remove the Flash Drive, and boot from it. There are several ways to get your computer to boot from the USB Flash Drive now. My computer hitting F8 during the BIOS load screen allows me to choose what drive to boot from. I prefer this way because you should only ever need to boot from removable media once. The other way is to get into your bios and change the boot order so that the USB drive boots first. After it has reset once, you need to change it back unless you want it to install over and over again. I would go over how to do this but each bios is pretty much unique to the hardware.
Don’t forget to add SATA/RAID if you need them. Also, assuming you have the space, you can add any drivers or other programs that you may need to this flash drive because it is going to be there anyways.
Good luck, and have fun installing.
Credits
This page was original written by Donavon from HomeServerHacks, and modified to include how to install Windows Vista, and Windows Home Server Restore Disk.
30. April 2008 at 1:28 pm
Thanks! This is such an issue, especially when trying to re-install the server.
Plus I have the “Unable to initialize UI subsystem” error, which I attribute to the temporary DVD drive I’m trying to use, so by-passing it will be a life saver.
30. April 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thank you! One question: When I copy the contents of the DVD to the flash drive, do I need to create a new directory for the DVD contents? Or do I just copy the contents of the DVD verbatim to the root of the newly formatted flash drive?
30. April 2008 at 6:15 pm
Thank you. I have been looking for a way to include the key into a vista install disk for a while.
30. April 2008 at 6:53 pm
Michael: Verbatim. So it looks exactly like the DVD.
18. May 2008 at 5:00 am
How do I add SATA/RAID? Thanks I need to restore my system.
18. May 2008 at 7:54 am
Craig, two ways to do it. One, is to create a folder on the flash drive, and point to it when the installer asks, or head over to the wiki for gamer’s tutorial on how to slipstream stuff into the installter.
4. June 2008 at 6:56 pm
Just so people know this only works with diskpart 6.0.6000 and up aka Windows Vista and up, I tried to diskpart a USB stick in Windows XP and Windows Home Server (Windows 2003) and neither would recognize the USB drive as a selectable disk FYI
4. June 2008 at 7:06 pm
Yes, this only works with Vista. Sorry I didn’t emphasize that point. I also tried it on XP and server to no avail. Well, actually it should work with Server 2008 also.
17. August 2008 at 6:10 pm
drashna, do we need to use bootsect to make the drive bootable?
read somewhere else that u need it, but u arent using it here. if u can clarify about this i would be grateful
17. August 2008 at 6:26 pm
Not as far as I am aware. I’ve used the tutorial myself several times. All you have to do is use the instructions up there. Also, if you have a Vista install disk or a Server 2008 install disk, you can use that rather than having to install Vista, as the proper version of “diskpart” is actually on the disk.
The big things are the that it is a primary partition type, and that it is marked as active. I’ve heard of somebody having problems with it being FAT32, but formatted it as NTFS and had no problem.
13. September 2008 at 12:08 pm
Hi all,
will it be possible to do windows xp this way, and if so where do i put the key to automate the installer?
13. September 2008 at 7:32 pm
XP, no. There are a number of guides out there for doing it, but the problem is that XP uploads all USB devices during setup initialization. Including the install medium. It requires a hack to get around it.
That, and WHS doesn’t require this, as it uses the same base installer as Vista. I can’t find my links for creating an XP version, but they are complicated and a lot of people have problems getting them to work eve still.
15. September 2008 at 12:04 am
If you use the following command, then you save a few minutes:
format fs=fat32 quick
22. September 2008 at 12:19 am
You can… but I prefer a good full format as it reduces problems and can fix “damaged” sections (one marked bad by OS). That and it is good to do once in a while.
4. November 2008 at 5:51 am
Hey I’m trying to make this boot usb for my voodoo envy 133 (which has an external eSATA/USB dvd drive I don’t want to have to deal with during installation) but I only have the vista ultimate 32 bit UPGRADE dvd not the full install dvd. I know it’s possible to clean install from the upgrade dvd but I was wondering if it’s possible to boot from the usb with the upgrade dvd files in it? Otherwise is it possible to extract the files from the dvd and onto the hard drive of the computer to then upgrade vista to ultimate? Thanks!
29. November 2008 at 12:38 pm
The format could also be done with HP format utility (?) much faster and without MS Vista.
XP can be made with BartPE builder.
29. November 2008 at 11:56 pm
Hey…
Thank you, thank you, thank you….
I’ve searched for about 5 hours for a way to install Windows Server 2008 onto my new HP Proliant DL120 G5 server witch has no cd-rom drive og floppy.
I used a Kingston DataTraveler 8GB USB stick for it, and this approch was the only one that worked for me. And it was SO EASY!
Thnx again!
/Lasse
2. January 2009 at 12:30 pm
Similar to AK’s post of 11/4…
I have an upgrade version of Vista Home Premium for a new HTPC build (which will be backed up to my WHS MSS). It requires the install to be done from an existing installation of my previous OS. I have a copy of XP Pro no longer in use that I’ve set aside for this qualification. Is there a way to do a clean install of Vista Home Premium via USB flash drive while skipping the XP Pro install? Maybe a way to put both license keys in that PID.TXT file?? That would be very nice! Thanks.
22. January 2009 at 8:15 am
I am amazed with it.It is good thing for my research. Thanks. ^_^
26. January 2009 at 8:10 pm
Drashna,
I tried this method with WHS recovery CD without success. I tried several types USB drives including 1GB, 2GB and 4GB. I also tried using external USB drive (HDD). All failed in booting WHS recobery CD. The error message is something like ‘In order to protect Windows, the system will be shutdown …’ during the boot of the recovery CD.
Have you tried this with WHS recovery CD? If yes, what kind of USB drive you used?
26. January 2009 at 8:53 pm
I used a Kingston DataTraveler 4GB USB Stick. However i think that if you are able to boot, at least some of the way, the problem is not the USB stick you are using.
Could it be some setting in BIOS that prevents the boot to run successfully?
28. January 2009 at 3:06 am
On the same PC, I can use USN device for booting Vista, WinXP as well as WHS. So I don’t think that the problem is on the BIOS setup. It doesn’t seem to be that the problem is at the USB device at all because I can’t boot WHS receovery Cd from aby USB connected device including HDD, external CD-ROM as well as USB drives (at least three).
24. April 2009 at 4:28 pm
Great stuff. Nice to read some well written posts. A long way between them.