HolyOne Posted May 5, 2009 Share Posted May 5, 2009 Hey all, I've just finished downloading the Windows 7 RC, and I plan on dual booting it with my current XP installation. Since I don't have any blank DVD's, I decided to install off my USB drive - but I have a couple of questions. 1) How do I mount the ISO onto my 8 GB USB drive? 2) How do I boot the installation from my USB drive? Does it have to be the only thing on there? Or is it cool if I have the ISO along with my music and whatnot? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregrocker Posted May 5, 2009 Share Posted May 5, 2009 (edited) There is no need to boot from USB to install on second partition. Just extract the ISO files and run from your XP desktop or USB stick to install to second partition. Before doing this, you should use Disk Management to shrink your XP partition, then create and long format (NTFS) your new partition. This is a clean install of Win7, in fact a cleaner install than you will get from the ISO since the Disk Management utility will give you a long format (writes zeros to drive) whereas installer is only quick format. The installer will make Win7 default OS with a 30 second boot menu timeout, however this default and the timeout can be changed in Advanced Options>Startup. For example, you can keep Win7 default and set menu timeout to 0 and it will be just as though XP isn't there until you change settings back, with no performance hit whatsover. If you wish to further manage your Boot Menu options, relabel, or remove one after uninstalling OS use Easy BCD or Vista Boot Pro 3.0 freeware. The procedure for loading Win7 to a USB stick to make it bootable is to format the USB flash as Primary then load the files into the root - other files may be placed there later as long as you do not mess with the OS files which must remain in the root. This will work on most sticks but if it needs boot sector formatting then I suggest Ultra ISO (trial) using Write to Drive (USB) on Bootable tab, or google one of the manual methods of doing this. Edited May 5, 2009 by gregrocker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HolyOne Posted May 6, 2009 Author Share Posted May 6, 2009 So I could just run 7-Zip to extract the ISO, and run that from my desktop? I wouldn't have to mount it, or use a virtual drive or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregrocker Posted May 6, 2009 Share Posted May 6, 2009 So I could just run 7-Zip to extract the ISO, and run that from my desktop? I wouldn't have to mount it, or use a virtual drive or something? either, or. I used Virtual drive previously and sometimes still do if it seems quicker, but just extracting the files gets you to the same place by just running setup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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