How to make Windows 7 USB flash install media from Linux?

OK, after unsuccessfully trying all methods mentioned here, I finally got it working. Basically, the missing step was to write a proper boot sector to the USB stick, which can be done from Linux with ms-sys or lilo -M. This works with the Windows 7 retail version.

Here is the complete rundown again:

Install ms-sys – if it is not in your repositories, get it here. Or alternatively, make sure lilo is installed (but do not run the liloconfig step on your local box if e.g. Grub is installed there!)

Check what device your USB media is assigned – here we will assume it is /dev/sdb. Delete all partitions, create a new one taking up all the space, set type to NTFS (7), and remember to set it bootable:

# cfdisk /dev/sdb   or   fdisk /dev/sdb (partition type 7, and bootable flag)

Create an NTFS filesystem:

# mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/sdb1

Write Windows 7 MBR on the USB stick (also works for windows 8), multiple options here:

  1. # ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb
  2. or (e.g. on newer Ubuntu installs) sudo lilo -M /dev/sdb mbr (info)
  3. or (if syslinux is installed), you can run sudo dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbr/mbr.bin of=/dev/sdb

Mount ISO and USB media:

# mount -o loop win7.iso /mnt/iso
# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

Copy over all files:

# cp -r /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb/   …or use the standard GUI file-browser of your system

Call sync to make sure all files are written.

Open gparted, select the USB drive, right-click on the file system, then click on “Manage Flags”. Check the boot checkbox, then close.

…and you’re done.

After all that, you probably want to back up your USB media for further installations and get rid of the ISO file… Just use dd:
# dd if=/dev/sdb of=win7.img

Note, this copies the whole device! — which is usually (much) bigger than the files copied to it. So instead I propose

# dd count=[(size of the ISO file in MB plus some extra MB for boot block) divided by default dd blocksize] if=/dev/sdb of=win7.img

Thus for example with 8 M extra bytes:

# dd count=$(((`stat -c '%s' win7.iso` + 8*1024*1024) / 512)) if=/dev/sdb of=win7.img status=progress

As always, double check the device names very carefully when working with dd.

The method creating a bootable USB presented above works also with Win10 installer iso. I tried it running Ubuntu 16.04 copying Win10_1703_SingleLang_English_x64.iso (size 4,241,291,264 bytes) onto an 8 GB USB-stick — in non-UEFI [non-secure] boot only. After execution dd reports:
8300156+0 records in
8300156+0 records out
4249679872 bytes (4.2 GB, 4.0 GiB) copied, 412.807 s, 10.3 MB/s

Reverse if/of next time you want to put the Windows 7 installer onto USB.

Related Posts:

  1. Confused about stdin, stdout and stderr?
  2. How to set the environmental variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH in linux
  3. What’s a .sh file?
  4. How to fix ‘sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified’ error?
  5. How do I grep recursively?
  6. What does pss mean in /proc/pid/smaps
  7. apt-get error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
  8. error: ‘Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2)’ — Missing /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
  9. Where can I find php.ini?
  10. gzip: stdin: not in gzip format tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
  11. How do I grep recursively?
  12. how to find libstdc++.so.6: that contain GLIBCXX_3.4.19 for RHEL 6?
  13. How to extract C source code from .so file?
  14. subprocess.Popen(): OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error in python?
  15. How to substitute shell variables in complex text files
  16. How can I recursively find all files in current and subfolders based on wildcard matching?
  17. Curl command for https ( SSL )
  18. “sed” command in bash
  19. How to exclude a directory in find . command
  20. How can I find all *.js file in directory recursively in Linux?
  21. Argument list too long error for rm, cp, mv commands
  22. Difference between using “chmod a+x” and “chmod 755”
  23. ssh: Could not resolve hostname [hostname]: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
  24. WSL – GEDIT Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
  25. Python subprocess.Popen “OSError: [Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory”
  26. Install tkinter for Python
  27. How to open some ports on Ubuntu?
  28. Given two directory trees, how can I find out which files differ by content?
  29. Uncompress tar.gz file
  30. What does it mean to mount a file system in linux?
  31. curl: (6) Could not resolve host: google.com; Name or service not known
  32. How to pass password to scp?
  33. scp gives “not a regular file”
  34. TCP congestion control version: HTCP module vs highspeed module in linux kernel
  35. How to use regex with find command?
  36. -bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
  37. Explanation of polkitd Unregistered Authentication Agent
  38. CentOS error – sudo: effective uid is not 0, is sudo installed setuid root?
  39. Merge / convert multiple PDF files into one PDF
  40. scp from Linux to Windows
  41. Bash script: bad interpreter
  42. How do I find the MySQL my.cnf location
  43. PHP and mod_fcgid: ap_pass_brigade failed in handle_request_ipc function
  44. How to grep and replace
  45. node.js: cannot find module ‘request’
  46. What is the reason and how to avoid the [FIN, ACK] , [RST] and [RST, ACK]
  47. What does “&” at the end of a linux command mean?
  48. wget returns “Unable to establish SSL connection”
  49. How to recursively download a folder via FTP on Linux
  50. List all mounts in Linux
  51. error : storage class specified for parameter
  52. httpd: Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName
  53. How do I write stderr to a file while using “tee” with a pipe?
  54. How to include file in a bash shell script
  55. Does Mac OS X use Linux?
  56. bash sh – command not found 
  57. Hosting multiple WordPress sites on single server – best practices?
  58. WordPress Update – This is usually due to inconsistent file permissions.: wp-admin/includes/update-core.php
  59. Is it a good idea to edit WordPress within Eclipse? [closed]
  60. Anyone else experiencing high rates of Linux server crashes during a leap second day?
  61. Can I nohup/screen an already-started process?
  62. df in linux not showing correct free space after file removal
  63. In my /etc/hosts/ file on Linux/OSX, how do I do a wildcard subdomain?
  64. Setting the hostname: FQDN or short name?
  65. Shell command to monitor changes in a file
  66. When does /tmp get cleared?
  67. Difference in sites-available vs sites-enabled vs conf.d directories (Nginx)?
  68. How do I sleep for a millisecond in bash or ksh
  69. Disk full, du tells different. How to further investigate?
  70. What does ‘set -e’ do, and why might it be considered dangerous?
  71. Filename length limits on linux?
  72. What useful things can one add to one’s .bashrc? [closed]
  73. How to add a timestamp to bash script log?
  74. best way to clear all iptables rules
  75. How can I port forward with iptables?
  76. How to remove empty/blank lines from a file in Unix (including spaces)?
  77. Why do we use a OS Base Image with Docker if containers have no Guest OS?
  78. How can I kill all stopped jobs?
  79. How to copy file preserving directory path in Linux?
  80. Postfix – how to retry delivery of mail in queue?
  81. How can I rename a Unix user?
  82. How to re-order windows, change the scroll shortcut, and modify the status bar contents in GNU Screen?
  83. How to get pid of just started process
  84. How to install/change locale on Debian?
  85. What limits the maximum number of connections on a Linux server?
  86. How to prevent a user from login in, but allow “su – user” in Linux?
  87. I have a keypair. How do I determine the key length?
  88. How to do the port forwarding from one ip to another ip in same network?
  89. How to disable everything in crontab -l?
  90. df says disk is full, but it is not
  91. Why drop caches in Linux?
  92. What is the maximum port number?
  93. Linux – Is there a way to prevent/protect a file from being deleted even by root?
  94. swap partition vs file for performance?
  95. How to sort ps output by process start time?
  96. Is there a proper way to clear logs?
  97. Best way to disable swap in Linux
  98. How to remove invalid characters from filenames?
  99. How can I zip/compress a symlink?
  100. How to find the physical volume(s) that hold a logical volume in LVM

Leave a Comment