Having a bootable USB key is handy to have in your gear. A number of times in the past I have needed a bootable thumb drive but didn’t have time to get myself one. I needed this when I bought my first netbook, Lenovo S10. Netbooks normally do not have an optical drive and in most cases, the best cheaper option you have is by using a bootable USB drive.

You can create one with Windows 7 and below are the steps:

1. Go to your Windows 7 orb button of the left bottom side of the screen.

2. Click on the orb button

3. On the find text box, type “cmd”

4. The command prompt should appear in the search results

5. Right-click and run as administrator

6. On the command prompt type “diskpart”

7. Type in “list disk” after to start the Microsoft disk management utility

8. On the list show, make sure you write down the USBs key number you want to make bootable. Pick this out by looking at the disk space and make sure you have the thumb drive inserted.

9. Type “select disk [USB key number]”. Replace “[USB key number]”

10. Type “clean” to clean the disk, DiskPart needs your confirmation for this.

11. Enter “create partition primary” for a new partition disk

12. Type “select partition 1”, and make it active by typing “active”.

13. Format the key by typing “format fs=fat32”. Wait until this is completed.

14. Finally, type “assign” to assign this USB key a drive letter.

15. Type “exit”