Create an ISO file from the Windows 8 DVD.

Download BurnAware Free, a completely free program that, among other tasks, can create an ISO image from all types of CD, DVD, and BD discs.

Install and run BurnAware Free. Once open, click on Copy to Image and save the image to your hard drive.

Create a Bootable USB Stick from the ISO

Install and start the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.

Once open, select the ISO file for saving to USB.

You’ll probably get an error similar to this:

The select file is not a valid ISO file. Please select a valid ISO file and try again.

There is something about the structure of the BurnAware ISO that the tool doesn’t like. If you want to know more about the issue see here.

If you just want to fix it, download this tool from here.

Save the tool to the same directory as your Windows 8 ISO file, then run the following from cmd prompt:

cd <directory path>
isoavdcopy <iso file>

Almost there? Not quite!

After Step 4 of the process completes you might well get another error message like:

Files copied successfully. However, we were unable to run bootsect to make the USB device bootable

The fix….. Download a working 32-bit version of bootsect.exe. Below is a link to 32 bit bootsect.exe:

Once downloaded, copy the BootSect.exe file to the same folder that includes the Windows 7 USB tool.

You should be good to go from there!