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I know that, in order to install Windows 7 on my windows 8.1 laptop, I must disable secure boot then use the diskpart command to convert my USB disk to GPT and format it as fat32.

I made every thing and succeeded...

When I tried to make this again, with a new copy of Windows 7 that is greater than 4 GB, I couldn't copy the files to my USB driver because fat32 does not support files larger than 4 GB.

What can I do to make my laptop accept NTFS file system to install this version of Windows ?

Ob1lan
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mina
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  • Windows 7 supports NTFS why would you use FAT32? Windows 7 also being installed from a EFI disk, Windows 7 also supports GPT partition. Why are you using FAT32? Its not required to do what you want. – Ramhound May 27 '15 at 12:06
  • possible duplicate of [Clean install of Windows 7 Pro 64-bit on a UEFI laptop with GPT partition?](http://superuser.com/questions/676249/clean-install-of-windows-7-pro-64-bit-on-a-uefi-laptop-with-gpt-partition) – Ramhound May 27 '15 at 12:24
  • @Ramhound this is no dupe. You didn't understand the question. UEFI doesn't support NTFS, so you need to use FAT32 on USB thumb drives, but here the Install.wim must be <=4GB becasue of the FAT32 file size limitations. – magicandre1981 May 29 '15 at 04:18
  • @magicandre1981 All the Windows disk I own are EFI compatible, so your right, I didn't understand and that's the reason I asked. – Ramhound May 29 '15 at 10:07
  • Not even the whole Windows 7 SP1 ISO is 4GB, I don't see why install.wim shouldn't fit. – mirh Feb 20 '17 at 14:00

4 Answers4

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The latest Rufus Version includes a free NTFS driver for EFI to use NTFS instead of FAt32 to avoid the 4GB file size limitation when creating a bootable USB thumb drive.

  • Version 2.0 (2015.03.03)

Add seamless UEFI boot of NTFS partitions, for Windows ISOs with large files (>4GB)

Community
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magicandre1981
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simply format your boot USB Stick with exFAT filesystem which can handle >4GB files fine and will be recognized by most UEFI (and BIOS). just tested it with a 6 year old Macbook

Falco Alexander
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    Macs are _in no way_ typical UEFI machines; their EFI implementation actually predates the UEFI specification and has some quirks not found in most UEFI PCs. – Vikki Jul 05 '21 at 18:51
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I ran into this same issue with Windows 7 64 bit on some new laptops I was imaging. After the drivers and a few apps were installed, the install.wim file was almost 8GB! Obviously, that won't work on the the usual WinPE USB flash drive formatted with FAT32. So, after making a duplicate copy of my Windows 7 install Flash Drive, I used the Windows 7 convert.exe to convert my bootable Windows 7 install FAT32 Flash drive to NTFS. Then I loaded my 8GB install.wim image onto the newly NTFS converted flash drive with ease. Next I booted this drive on my target machine and voila! Image installed without issue. Hope that helps! -Kev

ktraub
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Few years ago I used HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and unetbootin to do this. Check it out, should work.

nowak
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  • Please read [How do I recommend software](https://meta.superuser.com/questions/5329/how-do-i-recommend-software-in-my-answers/5330#5330) for some tips as to how you should go about recommending software. At the very least you should provide more than just a link, for example some additional information about the software itself, for example how it can be used to solve the problem in the question. – DavidPostill May 27 '15 at 12:54
  • ok im sorry, im going to read it – nowak May 27 '15 at 13:50