Windows 7: Win7 installed to SDHC how?

I have a question for you all on how to install Windows 7 onto my 16GB class 6 SDHC card. I can install to my hard-drive fine. During install I'm told that installation to usb media isnt possible. (Onboard reader in eeepc900ha)

Please dont send me to EEE forums. They are little to no help.

Oh you mean ran into....



while trying to install 7 on a reader. Sorry! The Windows installer simply looks for an internal hard drive by design to be setup as the main OS. First partition of the first hard drive is the default install until selecting another primary or drive/partition.

If you simply want an OS on it try a small Linux distro like ubuntu. That was installed rather easily on a usb flash drive here seeing that turned into a portable OS. Windows on the other hand... no go!

actually i am think that you can do it this way...
Virtual Hard Drive VHD File - Create and Start with at Boot
its not as good answer as you might have hoped but this way you should be able to bypass that error (and it should give you better performance..)
just change the location of the VHD file to where the SDHC card is and set the right size in mb...

and nighthawk
Backtrack is a linux OS used for penetration/protection testing (been using it for some time now that is hard to install to a HDD but not impossible..)

Thanks darkassain, I'll give that a go in about 10 min...

But before I give that a go, I've got the boot partition and installed partition to the SD card... But the bootloader is refusing to load from the SD card... Anyway of modifying the bootloader?

And I'll also try bypaassing the windows bootloader with grub... Possible fix?

--Edit-- VHD is no-go on my laptop. trying to install to a VHD caused bsod's...
--Edit again-- I cant bypass the windows bootloader either. It just refuses tro play nice. Maybe I should just give up on windows again.

**Ps. I found backtrack+ubuntu 9.04 much faster/usable/stable than then backtrack itself. And I got the startup to about 20sec to desktop, not including the time it takes to type in user/pass...

When I wanted to create multiple partitions on a USB stick, I found a way to make windows think it's local disk...

using with the cfadisk.inf driver

Perhaps if you chose "load driver" during windows setup and loaded this driver for your usb hard disk, it might work (I haven't tested it so far)

You need to edit cfadisk.inf and change the DEV/VEN lines beforehand according to your SDHC's hadrware ID.

Here's a detailed guide if you wanna give it a try:

MSFN Forums > A Multiple Partition USB Stick with Multi Boot OS

On the other hand, I think in some recent BIOSes there is an option to force the USB to fixed disk mode, floppy mode etc..If you have this option in your BIOS, give it a try.

I will try the first method when I have time and let you know how it goes.

Blast! 9.03 is out and I just reinstalled 8.10 on the flash drive again on a 2+gb extended there. I don't think Windows would fit too well on the remaining 12.8gb ntfs partition.

Some have been running Windows on a virtula machine while the primary OS is Linux. Flash cards are not quite the same as any usb drive.

Way ahead of you. Needless to say it didnt work, I was quite dissapointed.

I've never seen that, Learn something new everyday. But alas my eeepc 900HA lacks that option.

**Am posting from a virtual XPsp3 inside linux... But my serial-port adapter does not function with VM-ware... (I need to use serial-rs232 connections at work...) Hence the need for a real windows install. But I refuse to have it installed on my hardddrive...

Its a sad way to use Windows like that and a huge performance loss, use the VHD boot method

Sorry dmex... Tried it already.

I'll try again, however I don't like my chances.

ok then...try this other thing...

install normally on your laptop's build-in harddrive.
After installation, create a full drive backup to your SDHC disk, or make a ghost clone to that disk anyway.
After that, select that disk at bootup to boot your computer and see what happens...

Could work, not sure though.