There seem to be guides all over the internet, that allow you to create your own Bootable Windows7 Installation on a Pen Drive. Whilst not overly complicated, these methods have enough of nonsense to scare the beginners away.

So read on to find out how you can install Windows7 on your computer using a USB Pen Drive, without all the pain of burning DVD’s etc…

Lets get started then, here are the requirements before we proceed :

• A Windows7 ISO Image (Any Version will do)
• UltraISO (It isn’t free, but the trial version is sufficient for this guide)
• A 4+ GB Pen Drive

Let’s begin then..

1. Download and Install UltraISO (Free Trial)
2. Plug in the pen drive into your PC, and backup everything that you need from the Pen Drive, because all the existing data will be wiped off the pen drive.
3. Start UltraISO, navigate to File->Open and locate the ISO image of Windows 7 and open it.
4. In the local tab located at the bottom left, select your USB Drive. (Double check to make sure this is the drive you want to make bootable)
5. Now click Bootable->Write Disk Image from the Menu
6. In the dialog box that appears, click Write to write the image onto the USB pen drive. (Optionally you can also check Verify, this will check the data written for any errors)
7. Wait it for it to complete, and congratulations you’ve just created a bootable Windows7 Installation using USB Pen Drive.
8. Restart your computer and press F2/F9 while booting up, to boot from the Pen Drive and proceed to install Windows7 just like you’d do otherwise using a DVD.

[Bonus]

Want an even easier solution to install Windows7 using your USB Pen Drive. Go ahead and grab a copy of WinToFlash. Extract the contents of the Zip Archive and open WinToFlash.exe. You should now see a screen as shown..

Click the “Huge” Windows Setup Transfer Wizard and you should now see something like this. Enter the appropriate details and bang you can create the bootable disk in less than a couple of simple steps.

Yes it really was that simple to create your own Windows7 Installation Pen Drive! Drop in your comments and let us know if this Hack Attack worked for you

Photo Credit : Molotalk & bfishadow | Downloads :  WinToFlash & UltraISO

Via DotNetWizard & Raymond CC

You might ask me, doesn’t Windows already provide a tool that ejects the USB devices safely for you? Yes it does, but its interface is downright confusing to most users, and it has long way to go in comparison to the application I’m previewing here.

USB Disk Ejector is a software that will allow you to quickly remove USB devices in Windows. While the software was originally developed to be used to eject pen drives, but it has now come a long way to support all kinds of USB devices.

As I said the Windows interface for removing USB devices is downright confusing and it has a long way to go before it can beat the simplicity and functionality of USB Disk Ejector.

Apart from a very functional and usable GUI, USB Disk Ejector also has a flexible command line interface that gives you a lot more.

• Eject the drive that the program is running from.
• Eject a drive by specifying a drive letter.
• Eject a drive by specifying a drive name.
• Eject a drive by specifying a partial drive name.

USB Disk Ejector is a tiny app and is just about 500KB. Just Download, Extract and Run. No installation required.

This tiny app is now going to become a part of my daily life, because I regularly keep using USB devices, and at any moment there is atleast my crappy Nokia 5200, Pen Drive, Memory Card Reader connected. So USB Disk Ejector is one of the must have apps if you are Dailyapps reader.

Download USB Disk Ejector

Thanks Keith

Its been a only few days since Microsoft released Zune 2, the portable music player that everyone hates. I really liked the hype that Microsoft built up for Zune 2 and believe me it does look like a solid Music Player and manages to beat its chief Rival Apple iPod in a quite a few places.

Leave all that apart, I am now going to tell you how you can use your Zune as just another flash drive using the USB port. Please note that this is a registry hack, so make sure you backup your registry before proceeding..

• Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn’t running
• Open up Regedit by going to the start menu and selecting “run”. Type regedt32 and hit “OK”
• Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet002\Enum\USB\
• Search for “PortableDeviceNameSpace”. This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above …\USB\ The ##’s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune.
• Change the following values:
• EnableLegacySupport to 1
• PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
• ShowInShell to 1
• Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
• Hopefully at this point you can open up “My Computer” and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.

This hack seems to be working for quite a lot of people so please let us know in the comments section, if this works for you..

Via Zunerama