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Install Windows 7 from a USB stick

Jan. 14, 2009 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

You know, if the DVD thing is just too difficult. :)

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.

Thanks Sebastian V.!

Discuss this Article 13

Ocean
on Jan 14, 2009
THIS is useful. Thanks! This Windows 7 buzz is positively iPhone like.
cavery
on Jan 14, 2009
The DVD thing is pretty difficult on a netbook with no DVD drive.
Dipsh t Admin
on Jan 14, 2009
My non-netbook ultraportable ThinkPad x61 also doesn't have a DVD drive, so this is a necessity for when I will need to install it on that computer. Good info to know.
kenmcnamee
on Jan 14, 2009
Getting an external USB DVD/RW drive is a good investment. I don't bother installing internal DVD drives in any of my computers. If I ever need to read or write a DVD or CD then I just hook up the external one. When you think about it, it's not really a component that you need to buy for every machine these days since most software and music can be downloaded. http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SkuSearch_v2.asp?SCriteria=AA74712
t113598
on Jan 14, 2009
Installed Yesterday from a USB stick and had absolutely no problems - Love Win7 so far. jw
Waethorn
on Jan 14, 2009
"Getting an external USB DVD/RW drive is a good investment." I still have a Plextor PX-716 USB/1394 drive. I don't see the need to invest in anything newer, until it breaks down of course. I've seen different technologies come and go over the years though. Some good that I wish were still around (Zen TrueX; DiscT@2), some bad that I wish weren't marketed as much as they have been (Lightscribe, Labelflash, and the cost of media for each). Nowadays, a quality DVD burner can be replaced for less than the price of a big spindle of discs, and I don't see much else coming out of the DVD market. It's pretty much awash now. Until Blu-ray comes down drastically in price, there's not a huge reason for customers to switch from DVD stuff for the time being.
Waethorn
on Jan 14, 2009
Something the guy forgot to mention on that video is that a desktop drive like that can't be power by USB, so although you can easily get USB-to-IDE adapter cables like that almost anywhere, not all of them come with AC-to-DC Molex transformer power cables. You'll need one for a desktop drive. The "active" parameter is important in diskpart. If you don't use that, the disk isn't bootable. Only copying the files from the DVD won't make the USB drive bootable either.
Waethorn
on Jan 14, 2009
Installing in Virtual PC, I can say that booting from a mounted ISO takes literally 4 seconds on my PC.
gorath
on Jan 14, 2009
Disc T@2 was excellent. But did anyone except Yamaha ever make driver that supported them? We still use a Yamaha CRWF1E drive in the studio, so we can T@2 our studio logo onto discs of demo mixes, or short run promos. It always raises a few eyebrows. Wae, you might know the answer to this thing I've been pondering about for years. On the original PS2 DVD games, they used to have a PS logo watermarked presumably into the unused second layer, producing very much the same effect that T@2 created. But, no manufacturing plant we've ever had contact with has been able to create such a disc. How were they made?
Waethorn
on Jan 14, 2009
"On the original PS2 DVD games, they used to have a PS logo watermarked presumably into the unused second layer, producing very much the same effect that T@2 created." I didn't know that. I think I played maybe 1 game on one. I'm not sure if you can create a Lightscribe/Labelflash pressed disc in a repro plant or not, but I kind of wonder if they just made a backwards copy on the label side and stuck an extra label on afterwards to cover it up.
gorath
on Jan 14, 2009
Most people I know didn't know until I'd pointed it out! They also didn't realise that a blue disc meant it was a CD, and a silver one was a DVD. You know what I miss as well? Black CDRs! as in, black plastic. I always liked the aesthetic of that.
Waethorn
on Jan 14, 2009
@gorath: I know the black ones were almost a PSX exclusive until TDK released them. TDK was one of the only ones though. It was a type of copy protection measure though, since many computer optical drives at the time wouldn't read them. Having a drive that not only would read, but also burn them, was something of a status symbol at the time too.
subzerohitman721
on Jan 14, 2009
@gorath, I always did love the black CDR's. Very sleek. Thanks for pointing everything out today. I learned a few new things.

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