Hello everybody!
In this video, I’m going to show you how to create a multiboot USB drive with Windows
7, 8 and 10, and even with Ubuntu operating system.
You can use such drive to install one of the operating systems at your choice, in contrast
to the commonplace situation of one bootable drive - one operating system.
You will learn where to download official images of Windows 7, 8 and 10 of various bitness,
and how to add them to bootable media.
Now let’s have a closer look at creating such a cool USB drive.
WinUSB app Start with downloading a special app, WinUSB,
which can write several operating system images to one drive, and do it at the same time.
It can work with such systems as Windows, Windows PE, various Live-CDs that don’t
require installation, and Linux-type operating systems.
The number of such images is only limited by the capacity of the drive you are using.
You can download the app from the official website by following the link below this video.
It doesn’t have to be installed - just launch this file, preferably with Administrator rights,
and get down to work.
You can download properly licensed Windows images from the Microsoft website, and the
only condition is that you will need a serial key for Windows 7.
Without it, you can’t download Windows 7 from this website.
Create a multiboot USB drive After you start the app, plug a USB drive
into your computer.
If it contains any important data, copy it to the computer’s hard disk as the USB drive
will have to be formatted (and all the data will be gone) when you turn it into a bootable
drive.
In the window that opens, you will see several options on the right.
It could be an ISO image of an operating system, a DVD containing an operating system installation
package, a Windows PE (portable operating system) image, and an image of Linux Ubuntu.
Right from this app, you can download the latest version of Ubuntu, the AVG Rescue system
recovery tool, the ESET Nod32 antivirus and a whole ton of drivers with DriverPack Network.
To add Windows images, click “ISO,” select a downloaded operating system image file and
open it.
Specify a corresponding name so that during the installation you can see what specific
operating system it is.
To add another Windows image, repeat these steps.
Select an image file and give it a name to be displayed during the installation.
If you want to add to your multiboot drive an image of Windows PE (a portable version
that can work without installation), choose “WinPE ISO” and open a corresponding image
file.
There is a special video tutorial about creating a Windows PE drive on our YouTube channel,
so you can watch it by following the link in the description.
To add a Linux Ubuntu image, open the section “OS & Drivers.”
If you already have an installation package on your hard disk, select “Ubuntu ISO File”
and specify the path.
If you don’t have it, select Ubuntu Desktop to download an image and don’t forget to
choose the proper bitness.
The operating system image will be downloaded while the multiboot drive is created.
To add several images of the same operating system (for example, the 32-bit and 64-bit
versions of Windows 7), repeat the same steps for as many times as necessary for the number
of images you want to write to the USB drive.
The point is to make sure that your drive has enough space to hold all of those images.
One more thing: if you are going to install Windows 7, for example, it would be great
to have a corresponding driver package at hand, so right after installing the operating
system you can set up the most essential drivers immediately.
For example, you add network drivers, and the rest can be downloaded from the computer
with the freshly installed Windows.
To add drivers, select “OS & Drivers,” find the tab “Drivers,” and then the button
“Add Driver Pack.”
When you click on it, the driver pack will be added to the list of operating systems.
To create a multiboot drive after adding operating system images, click “Next” in the corner
below.
Now select the file system for your multiboot drive.
Remember that new computers with UEFI support FAT32, but may not work properly with NTFS.
On the contrary, older computers often don’t recognize USB drives with FAT32 file system
when you enter their BIOS.
Which means you might have to experiment with file systems a bit before you go on.
In the future, you may also need to enter UEFI and switch the bootloader to BIOS-compatible.
Confirm your decision to format the drive and wait for the process to finish.
If the USB drive you are using is based on comparatively slow memory chips, it may take
half an hour or even longer.
First of all, the application will download the data which is not available on the disk
(Ubuntu installation package, driver package and other utilities), and then will begin
writing ISO images.
When the process is over, the program will inform you that the multiboot USB drive is
ready.
That’s all - now you can use this USB drive to boot or install an operating system.
When booting from the flash drive, select the necessary installation package in the
boot menu or in the Windows Boot Manager.
If you encounter any problems with booting from a USB flash drive, we have a very helpful
video tutorial in our channel, so you can watch it by following the link below.
In case of any problems with booting or installation, or if you see error messages when installing
the operating system, try creating the USB drive with a different file system.
That is, if you had this USB drive written in FAT32 format and there were problems, try
using a similar USB drive but this time in NTFS, and vice versa.
Also, try switching the boot mode from BIOS to UEFI and then the other way round.
To avoid problems, it is better not to write installation packages of operating systems
with different compatibility features, or combine two types of installers, UEFI-compatible
and UEFI-incompatible.
Of course, there are other ways of creating a multiboot drive as well, but they are more
complicated.
For example, you can use another tool, WinSetupFromUSB.
WinSetupFromUSB You can download it from its official website
by following the link in the description.
Plug a USB drive into your computer and run the program.
In the main window, use the top field to select the USB drive you’ll be using for writing
the images.
As well as in the previous case, all data in such drive will be removed.
Check this option - “AutoFormat it with FBinst” - to have the USB drive formatted
automatically and prepare it for becoming a multiboot one.
To get a USB drive for booting with UEFI and installation of an operating system onto a
GPT disk, use FAT32 file system, and the best choice for Legacy will be NTFS.
Now specify what exactly should be written to the USB drive.
Like with the previous tool in today’s video, you can add several installation packages
and create a true multiboot drive.
Check the necessary items and specify the path to the files.
After you have added the files you need, just click “Go.”
Agree and wait a little.
If you are creating a bootable USB drive with Windows 7, 8.1 or Windows 10, WinSetupFromUSB
may seem to freeze when copying the file windows.wim.
Don’t worry, in fact it is not frozen - just have some patience and wait until the file
is finally copied.
When the process is over, you will see a corresponding notification.
Images you can add to a bootable drive with WinSetupFromUSB
You can add the following images to your multiboot drive:
Windows 2000/XP/2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7/8 and 10, Windows Server 2008 and 2012.
Also, various Windows PE and Linux images.
Extra features for the multiboot drive This utility also lets you edit the boot menu.
The Advanced Options menu offers the opportunity to configure the images you copy to the USB
drive, for example: add boot-critical drivers for Windows 7, 8.1 and Windows 10, change
boot menu names for the USB drive contents, and also, let WinSetupFromUSB display and
use not only USB drives but all drives available on a specific computer.
A serious advantage of these utilities is that they can also add antivirus check when
booting.
That is why when you use a multiboot USB drive, you can always scan the hard disk for viruses
and create backups before you actually start the installation of the operating system.
That’s all for today!
I hope you find this video useful.
Hit the Like button and subscribe to our channel.
Leave comments to ask questions and share your opinion.
Thank you for watching.
Good luck.