Depending on the distro that is selected from the menu, the entire job from start to finish can take up to five to ten minutes, depending on the size of the ISO and the speed of the flash memory.ĭuring my tests, every single supported OS I threw at the utility easily created a working bootable drive that I could use on my computer. If you didn’t download the ISO beforehand, Universal USB Installer offers an option to grab the file for you before beginning the creation process. Whenever you want to create a bootable Linux installer stick, simply plug in your thumb drive, start the utility and select your favorite distro along with drive and format options, then click Create to begin the process. This utility even purports to do USB stick style installers for Windows Vista, 7 and 8, in case you want to skip the disc on those as well. If you have a thumb drive handy that is at least 4GB or larger in size, Universal USB Installer can come to the rescue with its special superpower: the ability to write ISO files of popular Linux distributions to a thumb drive for booting and installation onto the destination hard disk.

Bottom Line: When you need a Linux distro written to a USB thumb drive in bootable fashion and you want to avoid using burnable discs, Universal USB Installer for Windows is excellent for providing an easy way to go about doing this without learning tricky commands.

Supported OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Universal USB Installer Product Information:

Not only is this a waste of money, but discs are not particularly fast when compared to solid-state media.

Whether I’m going to perform a clean install or merely use the Live boot portion to give the OS a test drive, there’s one thing I don’t really like to do, and that’s buying DVD-Rs and burning ISO images to them, only to then turn the disc into a new coaster for my drink when I get bored of it. Matt Nawrocki shows you just what you need for a bootable Linux distro written to a USB thumb drive.Īs an IT guru, I like to play around with multiple Linux-based operating systems. Review: Universal USB Installer for Windows

Universal installer for windows 7