attempting boot/install windows 7 from ext hd

I am having difficulty getting my computer to install Windows 7 from an external hd. Please take a look through the steps I followed below, I believe I may have missed something very basic (I'm not a power user).

1.I put an iso image of windows 7, 32bit onto my computer

2.downloaded/installed 'easeUSpartition master'; used it to shink the partition w/with data on external hd, created a new partition of the free space remaining on the hd; set new partition as 'active'.

3.used magic iso to extract files from the iso image of windows 7 32 bit installer onto the active partition that was created from the free space on the external hd.

4.reset computer, on startup went into bios, set USB flash drive to #1 position of boot order, set setting to 'enable boot from external drive', saved and exited.

5.on subsequent restarts, the computer restarts as it normally does, I do not see any messages during startup (e.g. 'push any key to boot from external drive').

Thanks in advance.

Setting the partition Active is not sufficient. It must be bootsected with a tool like Universal USB Installer or UltraISO Software To Create Bootable USB Flash Drive . But to do that you need a boot manager to choose which ext HD partition to format and boot.

Not worth the trouble when 4gb flash sticks are $5 with free shipping on buy.com, and good quality DVD's are $2 for 5 on the wall rack at Walgreens.

You convinced me, I could use another flash drive anyhow, so I went ahead and purchased one. Although I ended up going with newegg (6.99 shipped for a 8gb kingston mini: Newegg.com - Kingston DataTraveler Micro 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Model DTMC/8GB).

Thank you. Will post back when I follow the directions on the other link with another thank you for the upcoming successful installation. Cheers.

Once the ISO is written to flash stick (I'd use UltraISO) you can keep it on there and add your other files without interference, just be sure to keep the seven extracted installer folders in the root of the stick when you're ready to boot it.

There's more useful information here about how to handle backing up, drivers and getting and maintaining a perfect Clean Reinstall.