Saturday, April 25, 2009

Make a bootable USB drive to install Windows 7

Update for previous blog, from the following garyshort.org

Step 1 – Create a bootable USD Drive

  1. The first thing you need is a USB drive. (Ensure you backup an existing USB drive as you will be wiping the drive.)
  2. Open a command prompt as administrator.
  3. Get the drive number by typing:
    diskpart
    list disk

    On my machine the USB disk was number 1.
  4. Format the drive by typing:
    select disk 1
    clean
    create partition primary
    select partition 1
    active
    format fs=NTFS
    assign
    exit
  5. Mount the Windows 7 iso using Daemon Tools or similar.
  6. Navigate to the boot directory cd E:\boot
  7. Using bootsect, make the USB drive a bootable NTFS drive, ready for a Windows 7 image (my drive was labeled G):
    bootsect /nt60 G:
  8. We are finished with the command prompt now, so you can close it.

Step 2 – Copy the installation files from the mounted Windows 7 iso to the USB drive. (All files)

Step 3 – Install on the Netbook

  1. Plug in the USB drive and turn on the netbook
  2. On start up press to select the bootable drive (On ASUS Eee PC press Esc at boot up for Boot selection.)
  3. Select the USB drive and press return
  4. The netbook will boot from the USB drive and the installation will begin
  5. Install as normal.

Links:

See this blog for additional information on Windows 7 on Asus Eee PC 901.