Windows 7: Booting vista from usb drive

Salutations everyone!

This is my first post and hopefully its going in the right place.



I am currently trying to install Windows 7 Professional RTM to my computer. After installing it onto my laptop, I followed the same exact steps to install the 64 bit version instead of the 32 bit on my netbook. A problem that occured is that when I go on the bios, there is several options to boot from, and none of them are working. I tried USB-CD, USB-FDD, USB-HDD and none are working... Does anyone have any suggestions?

Do you have a setting called Legacy USB in your BIOS? If so, enable it.

yes it was already enabled

Can you set it to boot only from the USB? In other words, turn off all other boot options? Sometimes just setting the USB first in the boot order isn't enough, it has to be the only option.

haha yes, i tried making them all USB-HDD, USB-HDD, USB-HDD, its funny cause i found an old dvd disk and installed it with that, so that means the files are fine... but I really want to find out why it wont let me install from the usb drive hm..

thanks for the responses btw

You need to have special files on there for it to allow it to boot from it. You might try dmex's tool, though I am not sure you can access the page to view it....

If not, just send him a PM asking for it. His tool allows you to install from a USB drive. Pretty cool.

http://www.sevenforums.com/vip/20688-winbootusb.html

~Lordbob

i sent him a pm, thanks

Sorry but could you tell us what method you used to put it on the USB?

followed technet instructions, using diskpart, select disk 1, clean, create partition primary, format fs=fat32 quickj, active, exit then drag and drop files

Ah, I attempted a very simular thing last night.. became a two hour project. Then Brink suggested this tutorial, I used the first method and it worked perfectly!