This guide will teach you how to create a bootable usb drive or memory card that can be used to install Windows Vista or Windows 7. This is the ideal way to install Windows on a netbook as the majority of netbooks have no optical drive. First you need to format your usb drive / memory card as NTFS, this can be done by right clicking on the drive in my computer and selecting format. Next open a Command Prompt window from Start menu, it can be found under accessories. Right-click on Command Prompt and select the "Run as administrator" option. Now type diskpart in the Command Prompt window and press Enter, this will load the DiskPart program. Now type the following command: list volume This will show a list of all the drives in your computer, make a note of the volume your usb drive is. We now need to select the usb drives volume number, In this case we would type select volume 7 as the usb drive is listed as volume 7 The drive needs to be made active so type: active to mark the drive as active Now exit diskpart by typing exit Now we need to create a boot sector on USB drive so your computer can boot from it, we will use the bootsect.exe utility which can be found on the Windows 7 / Windows Vista DVD under the boot folder or downloaded form here. Ensure it is copied to the desktop or wherever you are currently working from in command prompt (in dos cd foldername changes the folder and cd.. moves back a folder) Now enter bootsect /nt60 I: Here I is the letter of my usb drive, replace it with the correct letter for your system, (Find this out by looking at what drive letter your usb stick is in my computer) Now all you need to do is copy the files across from your Windows 7 or Vista DVD. Now all you need to do is startup the computer you wish to install Windows on and tell it to boot from the usb drive or memory card, this will be different depending on the computer. On my MSI Wind netbook I can press F11 and select which device you wish to boot from. Some older computers and laptops might not support booting from USB. There you go, Windows 7 installing from the SD card in the laptops card reader.
I had trouble here, it said that it was an invalid command or something? EDIT: lol well now I'm going to bed (3:21AM)
Did you put the : after the drive letter? I forgot that when doing the screenshots for this guide and it took me a while to figure out what I was doing wrong.
Yeah, I did that and there was still the same error. EDIT: I think I figured out the problem, I'm testing it right now Yeah, its impossible...I can't do it, whenever I rightclick it and then run as admin it does C:\Windows\system32> So if I don't it does go to user but then I can't do it. So I guess I need to know how to make this one and only profile on this PC Admin.
My friend has a 4GB memory stick that he doesn't use anymore, would that be able to work too? He used it with his PSP, but he has an 8GB now.
Type “cd..” without the quotes until you get back to your C:\ drive Then type “cd users” “cd your-user-name” then “cd desktop” The command prompt working windows should now be your desktop
I'll give it a try...and hope it works. THANKS!!! That was excellent help! lol 4:14AM and i'm getting Windows 7 completely installed before I go to bed...so I'll be going to bed in an hour or so and then waking up a hour later.
If you go in to the sources folder and delete ei.cfg you will then be prompted which edition to install, very useful to be able to install every edition from one USB drive.
lol i can do all of that in about 3 steps download win 7 iso extract iso with 7 zip copy the iso folders set bios to boot from usb wollah done also theres a app that automates most of this called wintoflash WinToFlash - Install Windows from usb - Home page
Thats true now, however this guide was created long before any automated tools existed... and you might just learn something in the process
This tutorial was created way before any easy tools existed for it nice to know there is something official for it now.
when I type "active" it says "There is no partition selected. Please select a partition and try again." any ideas?