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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 ?

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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, 2015 at 12:06
  • @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. May 29, 2015 at 4:18
  • @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, 2015 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, 2017 at 14:00

4 Answers 4

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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)

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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

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  • 1
    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 5, 2021 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

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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.

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  • Please read How do I recommend software 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, 2015 at 12:54
  • ok im sorry, im going to read it
    – nowak
    May 27, 2015 at 13:50

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