With the advent of USB drives, our activities with CDs/DVDs are also decreasing considerably. The same has happened to the Windows installation process. Earlier, the Windows setup mostly involved a CD/DVD, but we have moved to USB drives with time. Installing Windows from a USB is okay, but have you ever considered installing multiple versions of Windows, like say, Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8,1, and Windows 7, from the same USB drive. Well, this tutorial is here to guide you on installing any version of Windows from one USB flash drive using a tool called WinSetupFromUSB.
Install any version of Windows from a single USB flash drive
Things you’ll need:
- A USB drive
- ISO files for Windows
- WinSetupFromUSB
- A working Windows PC
Step 1: Download WinSetupFromUSB from winsetupfromusb.com. Extract the downloaded file and run WinSetupFromUSB according to your system’s architecture (x64 or x86).
Step 2: Plug in your USB drive and ensure enough free space, or you can directly format the USB drive using WinSetupFromUSB. The FAT32 file system is recommended for installing Windows from USB. Choose your USB drive according to the number of setups you want to add. For more than two setups, it is recommended to have a USB drive of 16 GBs or more.
Step 3: Open WinSetupFromUSB, head to Advanced Options, and enable Custom menu names for Source. This option allows you to add your own custom names to Windows 7/8/10/11 menus.
Step 4: In WinSetupFromUSB, select your USB drive and then the versions of Windows you want to add to it. You can add Windows 2000/XP/2003 to Windows Vista/7/8/10/11.
Step 5: Locate the ISO files and hit the ‘Go’ button. The entire process will take a bit of time and will display a ‘Job Done’ message at the end.
Install multiple Windows versions using WinSetupFromUSB
To add more setups, repeat the process for more ISO files. For instance, I’ve added Windows 10 and Windows 7 to the USB drive. Since it cannot be done in one go, I added Windows 10 first and then added Windows 7 after the first job was complete.
Step 6: Now remove the USB drive and plug it into the computer where you want to install Windows. Go to the computer’s boot settings, boot from your USB drive, and select the desired option from the list. You are good to go.
That is all you need to do!
In addition to Windows, you can add Linux Distros to the same USB drive and do much more with WinSetupFromUSB.
Do also check out our tutorial on downloading Windows ISO files.
