Installing Win7 using a USB Stick

Posted By: Dennis Chung | Jan 16th @ 2:33 AM | 231,277 Views | 68 Comments

Formats:

Everyone's excited about Windows 7, so am i. However, i do notice a new generation of computing equipment, commonly known as Netbooks.

They are much lower in specs. Normally featuring an Intel Atom with 1 or 2GB of ram. Now Win7 is much more capable of running on Netbooks.

This video shows you how you can install Win7 on netbooks, which do not normally come with a DVD Drive. The video shows you how to prepare a USB drive with the installation bits and install off it.

Tags: Top 10, Windows 7

Rating:

DChung

The steps for preparing the USB Disk.

1. Diskpart
2. List Disk
3. Select Disk 1 (Replace 1 with number reflecting your USB Drive)
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. active
7. format fs=fat32 quick
8. assign

Now, a drive letter reflecting the drive should appear. Copy the bits from the DVD to the USB Stick.
If you get errors along the way, simply remove the drive and repeat the process.

Have fun.
Dennis
http://pingdennis.com

jeremywwl

Great video for Windows 7 Fans Smiley

Cheers
Jeremy

joshua4net

In reply to DChung

#Jan 13th @ 10:40 PM

Hi DChung
Nice topic

But on my system the USB doesn't shows, like you can see here;

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status      Size     Free     Dyn Gpt
-------- ---------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0    Online       149 GB      0 B
Disk 1    Online       298 GB      0 B

But it is displayed here;

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0     E                       DVD-ROM         0 B
Volume 1     F                       DVD-ROM         0 B
Volume 2     G                       DVD-ROM         0 B
Volume 3     C   C            NTFS   Partition     78 GB Healthy    System
Volume 4     D   D            NTFS   Partition    298 GB Healthy
Volume 5     I                FAT    Removeable 1960 MB

How to get to my USB drive "I"?

DumKopf

In reply to joshua4net

#Jan 14th @ 9:17 AM

Yeah, I'm having the same issue.

/edit: Turns out these instructions are for Vista only. DiskPart in Vista show USB disks in the list, XP does not.

DChung

In reply to joshua4net

#Jan 14th @ 9:17 AM

Hi Joshua4Net, DumKopf,

oops, didn't think about XP. Apologies.

The 2 important thing to get it bootable are;

- Fat32 with Primary Partition
- You need to make it Active

You can do the corresponding from the GUI too.
Let me find some time to see if i can get hold / setup an XP Machine.

Cheers,
Dennis

BTW: I'm generating 300 of these thumbdrives here in Singapore Wink
Thinking of ways to automate the process.

Ruper

Hi DChung,

I have a MSI Wind U100 and I'm thinking about installing Windows 7 on it? I'm not sure if you have this information but, do you think Windows 7 will run faster (or similar) than Windows XP (the OS I'm actually using) on an Atom 270 processor?

I know that Windows 7 will be outdated soon, but do you think I will notice that the system will work more slowly if I upgrade to Windows 7?

Thank you so much!

Steve456

Hi, I'm not sure, but don't you need the to make the newly formatted fat32 active partition bootable by updating the bootsector via the "bootsect /nt60 x:" command (the bootsect utility is in a folder named "boot" on the win7 installation dvd)?

Nickelman

In reply to DumKopf

#Jan 14th @ 4:57 PM

DChung

In reply to Ruper

#Jan 16th @ 11:28 AM

Hi Ruper,
one of my colleague, Keith (a new media specialist) is using MSI Wind U100. He is also a Win7 fan.

WHen Win7 was available, he loaded up. To his surprise, Win7 runs faster than the XP that was shipped. He loaded Photoshop right in front of me and i thought it loaded faster than on XP.

I know most people out there had feedbacks that Vista is very slow and resource hungry. With the additional Vista SP1, and the upcoming Vista SP2, you will notice performance and stability improvements.

But Win7 changes the cards around, its truly performant and locally in Singapore, we've tested with the following models; Asus EeeBox, Asus EeePC, MSI Wind U100, Lenovo S10, HP Mini 100 (I hope i got this model right). All runs fast even with 1GB of ram.

However, certain model of the Netbooks has a small problem. Win7 didn't readily recognize the device drivers and we had to load them ourselves using the Vista drivers (if a Win7 one is not available from the manufacturer). We'll fix this when we release Win7 over next few months as more drivers gets written for Win7.

Oops. Short question, long answer. In short, it'll work fast !!! Try it.
/Dennis