Installation from USB HDD

My motherboard has an ability to emulate USBs as CD/DVD or Floppy Disk. I want to install Windows 7 from my external HDD. I'm moving files to my USB HDD and setting BIOS to emulate it as DVD bu it won't work. What I'm missing? (Note: My DVD rom is not working)

Hi,

Did you mark the partition on the external HD Active?

SIW2 said:

Hi,

Did you mark the partition on the external HD Active?

You mean to boot my computer from my external USB HD? Yes, I'm pressing F8 during BIOS start and I'm choosing it.

Also it is formatted as NTFS.

Wait a minute - you are using XP - you will find 7 very different.

There's an extra step .

Open cmd prompt, cd to the 7 files/ mounted .iso
and issue bootsect /nt60 command to the USB drive.

Bootsect.exe is inside the 7 folder Boot e.g. :

I: (Drive letter of WiN 7 iso virtual drive e.g mounted with Power Iso, or Daemon tools)

CD boot

bootsect /nt60 K: (Replace K: with your USB drive letter )

SIW2 said:

Wait a minute - you are using XP.

There's an extra step for that.

Open cmd prompt, cd to the 7 files/ mounted .iso
and issue bootsect /nt60 command to the USB drive.

Bootsect.exe is inside the 7 folder Boot e.g. :

I: (Drive letter of WiN 7 iso virtual drive e.g mounted with Power Iso, or Daemon tools)

CD boot

bootsect /nt60 K: (Replace K: with your USB drive letter )

Already done. Gives me error. something like hmm... corrupted...

SIW2 said:

bootsect /nt60 K: (Replace K: with your USB drive letter )

For what is that? Where it mades a change? What is the purpose?

should I emulate my external USB HDD as HDD or DVD. Or just I have to boot from by external USB HDD. I'm pressing F8 in BIOS and I'm starting it.

What is corrupted?

SIW2 said:

What is corrupted?

a minute ago I tried again. I started my USB HDD normally, I got an error: A disk read error.

Then I emulated it as a normal HDD, and I got this error: BOOTMGR image is corrupt. The system cannot boot.

Bootsect Command-Line Options

It says nt60 is for Vista - but is the same for 7.

darkhorn said:

My motherboard has an ability to emulate USBs as CD/DVD or Floppy Disk. I want to install Windows 7 from my external HDD. I'm moving files to my USB HDD and setting BIOS to emulate it as DVD bu it won't work. What I'm missing? (Note: My DVD rom is not working)

First let me welcome you to sevenforums.

We need a bunch more information to be able to help you. If you fill out "my system specs" in user CP it would help. Im sure there is a tutorial on how to do this in the tutorial section. Did you dl an image of win 7 to install from? Is it 32 bit or 64. The install ashould be from an image not a bunch of files and folders.

Waiting for information

Ken