Creating bootable USB for Win7 x64 using Win7 x86

I'm currently running 32-bit Windows 7 (Professional, full version) on my laptop, and want to use this machine to create a bootable USB drive with 64-bit Windows 7 (also Professional, full version). I tried going through the steps that are available on various tutorials online, but I'm always tripped up while attempting to use bootsect to make the drive bootable; basically I get an error saying that I need to be using a 64-bit OS. I don't have convenient access to a computer with 64-bit Windows Vista/7 (I work at an academic institution where all pubic computers have XP or Linux), so I'm wondering if there's any way to get around this and create a bootable USB for 64-bit Win7 via a 32-bit OS. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Note: if there's an easy way to do this via 64-bit Linux, this would work too.

bdeen said:

I'm currently running 32-bit Windows 7 (Professional, full version) on my laptop, and want to use this machine to create a bootable USB drive with 64-bit Windows 7 (also Professional, full version). I tried going through the steps that are available on various tutorials online, but I'm always tripped up while attempting to use bootsect to make the drive bootable; basically I get an error saying that I need to be using a 64-bit OS. I don't have convenient access to a computer with 64-bit Windows Vista/7 (I work at an academic institution where all pubic computers have XP or Linux), so I'm wondering if there's any way to get around this and create a bootable USB for 64-bit Win7 via a 32-bit OS. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Note: if there's an easy way to do this via 64-bit Linux, this would work too.

To be clear, you want to run Win7 from an USB drive?

Yep, I want to install Windows 7 64-bit via a USB drive. I've tried several times installing via DVD, but I keep getting strange "missing CD/DVD drive device driver" error messages at the beginning of installation, even after reburning and redownloading the Win7 ISO file several times, so I thought that I might have better luck booting via USB.

bdeen said:

Yep, I want to install Windows 7 64-bit via a USB drive. I've tried several times installing via DVD, but I keep getting strange "missing CD/DVD drive device driver" error messages at the beginning of installation, even after reburning and redownloading the Win7 ISO file several times, so I thought that I might have better luck booting via USB.

You say yep, but your answer is contradictory.

As I now understand, you don't want to run the OS on the USB,
but you want to use the USB as an installation medium, right?

There is a tutorial on it in the tutorial section of this forum.

Greetz

You can also use diskpart to correctly format the USB flash drive, then just copy the files from the boot disc to the USB flash drive. There's a handy tutorial over at usingwindowshomeserver.com, among other places. The current operating system does not matter - I used Windows 7 x86 to copy my Windows 7 x64 files to my USB flash drive.

If I remember right, you'll need to download the correct version of bootsect to go with the platform you are trying to dump to USB flash drive. There are several guides that provide links, or you could just google the platform type and bootsect file.