USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

when making the usb and transferring the windows 7 32 bit or 64 bit does it matter if i am using vista 32 bit or 64 bit?

Hi Brink--

I want to complement you and Shawn and the rest. These forums do a great job and the tutorials are excellent and extremely well formated and designed. I referred to many of them for Vista Help and linked to them profusely.

I wonder if you can clear up a little bit of confusion for me. A few hours ago I wanted to help a friend out who did not have a working optical drive and had XP installed on his five year old laptop. I should have come here perhaps, but I read through a number of guides on installing Win 7 via USB stick.

I only had an 8 GB LG USB stick to use. I couldn't compare others, because people have suggested to me that the necessity of running that bootsect switch depends on what USB stick you use. What I found was, I had to eliminate the bootsect command simply because it would not run for me on an XP box or on a Win 7 box when I was making my USB stick which worked fine without it.

I understand that the bootsect command switch according to
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749177(WS.10).aspx and a number of other resources is to
Apply the master boot code that is compatible with BOOTMGR to SYS, ALL, or <DriveLetter>. The operating system installed on SYS, ALL, or <DriveLetter> must be Windows Vista.

I've seen it used on forums when people overwrite their MBR often when installing an older OS last instead of first for example, when trying to dual boot Vista and XP. I first ran across it when Vista's Beta testing was revving up, and some of the setup team for Vista was quick to offer it for people who had overwritten their MBRs in attempting dual boots (because they installed the newest OS prior to the old one and had to fix the MBR--and a few months later Neosmart and other websites came out with methods to fix this as well.

But while it seems to be recommended in many of the instructions on thumb booting Win 7, it doesn't seem to be needed at all, and I couldn't make it run on a Win 7 or XP box. I just wanted to comment/bounce off you an experience I had .

wanted to help my friend install Win 7 RC1 on his older laptop whose optical drive was brokena before MSFT makes it unvailable August 1. I decided to do it with a thumb drive and it was easy. However, in checking out several of the many links, they all had a step that I could never make happen, and I noticed a lot of people couldn't either. I tested this command on XP boxes and Win 7 boxes. I didn't have a Vista box to test them on any more, but some of the threads I've read said the command would run on a Win 7 box.d

The command is bootsect /nt60 g: where g would be the target drive that is the thumb drive letter (of course it would be whatever letter the thumb drive assumes. The instructions all call this command the command that "codes" the USB drive. I have no idea explicitly what they mean by "coding" the USB drive. I just know I couldn't/didn't run the command but it doesn't stop my thumb drive from installing Win 7 on a box (either upgrading or custom (formatting the drive with a previous or no OS on it).

Another part of most instructions that I found unnecessary was running the diskpart and list disk commands to find out what number the usb drive is. You could get the same information by simply going to diskmgmt.msc and seeing what number it's assigned, but I fail to see the point since you don't need the number assigned to the USB drive for anything.

I wondered if you knew the rationale for these.

I did follow the part of the directions in the link you offered that changed the USB drive from Fat 32 to NTFS. I didn't know why that was necessary, since I've never needed to change a USB drive to transfer files before, but simply since Windows has gone NTFS from XP on, I decided to go on and do that.

What worked fine for me then was:

1) Extract the files from an .iso or a magic iso file via Win Rar. Right clicking the file and selecting "Extract here" gets the job done.
2) Convert the thumb drive from Fat32 to NTFS.
3) Format the drive simply by right clicking it from Disk Management reached by typing diskmgmt.msc into the run box or Search box or typing Disk Management into the Search box.
4) Select all the extracted files and folders (3 folders and five files for a total of 8) and right click copy them to the USB drive.
5) Insert USB drive into target computer and click setup and Win 7 setup will run.

Thanks,

HKLM

Thanks Shawn.

Have you seen these instructions floating around to also make the USB stick act as a live CD for Win 7?

How To Install & Carry Windows 7 On Your USB Flash Drive

How To Install & Carry Windows 7 On Your USB Flash Drive - Windows Help Forum

I haven't tried it yet but I'm tempted.

Also I've had a lot of trouble signing in. I've signed up 3 times but I never get the email to activate, and my password for the first time I signed up in April doesn't seem to work. Appreciate any help you can give me to reinstate my original password.

Thanks,

HKLM