Vista (Or Windows 7) Installation from USB Drive

This is by no means new, but Kurt Shiantaku's Blog has instructions to create a USB Drive for Vista installation.

Here is the summary:

Find a 4GB or larger USB drive

put it in your windows computer, note the size and letter of the USB drive.

bring up a command prompt.

enter: diskpart
enter: list disk (make note of what drive number the usb drive is based on size)
enter: select disk 1 (or whatever number your USB drive is)

NOTE: You must be 100% sure you are working with the correct drive here, or you could wipe your hard disk.

enter: clean
enter: create partition primary
enter: select partition 1
enter: active
enter: format fs=fat32
enter: assign
enter: exit

(at this point I needed to remove and re-insert the USB drive, but your mileage may very)

Insert your Vista DVD, and note the drive letter it is using

then you need to enter the following:

copy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
changing d to the letter of your DVD source and e to the letter of your USB drive (if necessary)

you should then be able use this USB drive to install vista. This should also work for Windows 7.