Install Operating System from USB Flash Drive

• Run CMD.EXE and type the following.  Note: This set of commands assumes that the USB flash drive is addressed as "disk 1".  you should double check that by doing a list of the disks (type "list disk") before cleaning it.  If you have multiple hard drives, like an SDFlash drive or a Multibay drive, you could end up wiping your second drive using this command. 
  (This was a warning that Josh added to his post along with the following commands that I copied from him, so kudos to Josh)
  1. diskpart
  2. select disk 1
  3. clean
  4. create partition primary
  5. select partition 1
  6. active
  7. format fs=fat32
  8. assign
  9. exit
• Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive
  Simply issue the following command to start copying all the content from the Windows Vista DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive.
  • xcopy d:*.* /s/e/f e:

if it's necessary to clean the partitions from the the computer you are installting to, click shift F10 or Shift F12 while the installation is starting to reach a command prompt