USB drive Win7 installation

[ozgeek]

I am trying to install the RC from my 8GB micro cruzer drive. It is formatted in FAT32 and when I go to boot from it, it stays at the DOS screen showing a flashing _ for 5 minutes before I decided to give up.

I then discovered I need to make it an active partition. So I went to Disk Management and "Mark Partition as Active" is greyed out. I even tried DiskPart in the MSDOS prompt but I get error saying:

The selected disk is not a fixed MBR disk.

The ACTIVE command can only be used on fixed MBR disks.

What's going on?

[Anarcho-Capitalist]

Follow these directions to the letter and you will be fine.

http://www.electronicpulp.net/2009/01/14/h...sb-flash-drive/

[ozgeek]

Got up to the step during the format (PeToUSB), I get error:

Failed To Get Disk Layout!

[Southern Patriot]

Have you removed the U3 crap from the drive? If not, it probably won't work right trying to boot from it. All I ever had to do with my 4GB Cruzer was format it as FAT32 and extract the ISO to the root of the drive. Nothing special at all.

[ozgeek]

Yep, I used the U3 uninstaller and formatted it using Disk Manager a couple times using different settings. It really stupid and rubbish. I have another 4 GB stick (corsair voygar) lying around and it seems to work. I guess I will have to swap sticks. the 4GB was originally my system recovery and maintenance kit but now it seems to format right.

[Anarcho-Capitalist]

Yep, I used the U3 uninstaller and formatted it using Disk Manager a couple times using different settings. It really stupid and rubbish. I have another 4 GB stick (corsair voygar) lying around and it seems to work. I guess I will have to swap sticks. the 4GB was originally my system recovery and maintenance kit but now it seems to format right.

Make sure you clear that U3 stick completely with a format because you'll never know when you'll need a second stick if the Corsair gets lost or broken.

[ozgeek]

Like I said in the post you quote, I fully formatted the drive a couple times. It does appear as a regular drive with about 7.5gb partition.

The corsair worked great. Installed Win7 in about 10 minutes. Don't know why the sandisk one won't work even after many formats.

[Monotremata]

FWIW mine was installed from a 4 GB Cruzer and I didnt have to remove the U3 partition (I figured using Diskpart would kill it but its still there).

All I did was use DISKPART at the commandline, format the drive as NTFS, set the partition active, then copy the iso contents over.

Did it originally when 7100 leaked and just redid it yesterday and reinstalled at work with the actual ISO from Microsoft.

Worked a charm and in about 50 minutes I had all my apps reinstalled and my user profile restored and was up and running..

Boss was actually really impressed finally and for once didnt comment 'Now why are you playing with that beta stuff when youve got real work to do?'..

[Eric Veteran]

Try using the "BOOTSECT" command that's on the Windows 7 DVD...

Open a command prompt (Administrator mode), go to the root of the install DVD, and CD to "\Boot". (It's hidden.)

"bootsect /nt60 <drive letter>" should make it bootable. :) (You'll have to remove the USB drive when setup reboots after copying though as this method bypasses the 'press any key to enter setup" prompt.)

[bodmas]

Try the following method to boot from your Pen Drive / Flash Driveand install Vista and windows 7. You will need no third party software to do this. Just by using the command prompt, you can make your Pen Drive/Flash Drive bootable to install vista and windows 7.

Method 1:

Here are necessary steps: Take help from the following screen shot:

Step-1. Open command prompt. (type cmd in run command and click ok.)

Step-2. type : cd\ and hit enter ( later on I will not mention "hit enter" as it is presumable that you know how to execute dos command)

Step-3. type : diskpart

Step-4. type : list disk (your all disks will be displayed including your pen drive. Presuming that your pen drive is disk 1.)

Step-5. type : select disk 1

Step-6. type : clean

step-7. type : create partition primary

step-8. type : select partition 1

step-9. type : active

step-10. type : format fs=fat32 ( if getting error then type : format fs=32)

step-11. type : assign

step-12. type : exit

Now your pen drive has become bootable and active. Now you need to copy the extracted files of bottable ISO image of vista or windows 7 to your pen drive.

To do this, you can mount the image of vista or windows7 by using daemon tool or can extract it by using uniextrator tool.

Or, if u do not find them, then use this command line execution of extract command.

In the same cmd window, type :

D:\vista.iso /extract:H:\

assuming that the vista.iso file is in D drive and u want to extract it to your pen drive whose volume is H

Use windows7 file name at the place of vista file name. file name must match. Extension .ISO is necessary to type.

[path of source file] /extract:[pen drive volume]

================================================================

Method 2:(Easiest One)

Format your Pen Drive/Flash drive/Thumb Stick as Fat32.

Just extract the ISO file of vista or Win7 on hard drive. (right click the iso file and chose for extract to. )

suppose I have the extracted iso file in folder "vistaultimate" here :

and your pen drive/usb thumb drive/ flash drive letter is G

then one line command execution is as follows:

Open command prompt: (better as administrator) and type :

xcopy E:\image\vistaultimate G:\ /E /G (where E: is the root drive of your vistaultimate folder and G: is the

removable drive letter).

And if u want to copy from your vista or win7 DVD then command line is :

xcopy F:\ G:\ /F /G (where F: is the DVD drive and G: is the

removable drive location).

Its done. Now boot from this pen drive and install vista or win-7 beta.

[ToneKnee]

I find this quite funny. I tried to so hard to make this work with my USB U3 4GB and it wouldn't work with my old motherboard. Tried all the stuff mentioned above and so on, never worked, got the same error as you. But, when I built my new system, all I needed to do was copy all the files from the ISO straight to the USB drive (I used Ultraiso to do this for me) and I booted straight into it from the BIOS boot menu.