Windows 7: Install Windows 7 FAST without a DVD or USB device

wguimb · 26 Apr 2009

Well done. This is the kind of technical information needed for some of the more advanced users. Good work.

Romulinx2 · 27 Apr 2009

Great Tutorial.

The thing that always makes me laugh a little is that DOS is still useful as a command line language.

raj11650 · 04 May 2009

Quote: Originally Posted by Romulinx2

Great Tutorial.

The thing that always makes me laugh a little is that DOS is still useful as a command line language.

installing an most advanced OS using command in DOS is something great!!!

Luciak · 05 May 2009

Hi.

Let me start from the beginning.
I've downloaded W7 RC 7100 wrom MS site.
I burned it to DVD and tried to instal but I was getting error every time (0x80070002).
So I searched the web to solve the problem and found Your solution.
I followed it step by sep and everything was great.
But after using imagex when I was trying to use the command "bcdboot ..." I got error.
It was offcourse because I was using Win XP at that time.

So I found a sollution (at least I thought so).
I restarted my PC, poped in the W7 DVD I burned earlier and when the setup started I hit "Repair the system".

Everything was going ok, W7 was found and repaired. Than it started with no problem but as it occurred - my "previous C" partition was kind of disabled (screen from diskpart below).

So what do I do to enter my Win XP partition and not lose data from it (I have some files there that would be nice if I could recover them).

Please help...

Screen:

baarod · 05 May 2009

Quote: Originally Posted by Luciak

Everything was going ok, W7 was found and repaired. Than it started with no problem but as it occurred - my "previous C" partition was kind of disabled (screen from diskpart below).

So what do I do to enter my Win XP partition and not lose data from it (I have some files there that would be nice if I could recover them).

Please help...

Open diskpart and lis vol again, I'm assuming that vol 1 is the old XP. If it is just sel vol 1 and ass. That will assign a drive letter to vol 1.

Luciak · 06 May 2009

Quote:

Open diskpart and lis vol again, I'm assuming that vol 1 is the old XP. If it is just sel vol 1 and ass. That will assign a drive letter to vol 1.

Thanks for the answer. Currently I am at work so don’t have possibility to try it.

But I am curious about one more thing – will that partition be visible in boot loader?
Or will I have to use bootcfg command?

OK - I will see when I get home and try

baarod · 06 May 2009

I'm honestly not sure about that, Luciak. I'm guessing that it will not be visible in the bootloader but I'm sure we can add it if you'd like...

Luciak · 06 May 2009

Wow - had some problems but finally I booted my old XP

Your advice was very good and worked but as You also predicted, XP partition was not visible in bootloader.

As I assigned the letter to my old XP partition I wanted to change it back to C:
And I did - but it cost me faliure in W7 boot and no boot for XP.
So I was a little bit crushed.
I was fighting with it for few hours but it was worth it

Finally I managed to add boot sequence for XP and I have learnt a lot bcdedit commands

But it's working

And my question is - can I somehow clean the bcd?
Because as I understand it it is still in the system, just not visible from XP.
Am I right?

EDIT:

Ok - I managed to clean it with easyBCD.

EDIT II:

I have a little comment to the quote below, according to my recent experience.

Quote:

The only hard requirement is that you be running Windows 7 or Vista.

You can do this operation also under Windows XP. The only difference will be tah You will not do whole operation in CMD.

When You will get to this point:

Quote:

D:\Mike\Desktop\work>imagex /apply e:\sources\install.wim 5 h:\

ImageX Tool for Windows
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved.

[ 100% ] Applying progress

Successfully applied image.

Total elapsed time: 7 min 8 sec

You will not be able to do this step:

Quote:

D:\Mike\Desktop\work>h:\windows\system32\bcdboot h:\windows

So what You have to do is to use EasyBCD to make Your new Windows 7 installation bootable.
Very helpful here is this thread:
How to Do a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP
Start from point 7. of Method II and just adjust it to Windows 7 instead of XP.

Hope it will help someone to avoid the problems I had

And once again thanks for support.

baarod · 06 May 2009

You can do the bcdboot command if you change directory to where the DLLs that it depends on exist. I just found this out and hadn't yet added it to the tutorial. XP has some of the same DLLs as 7 but they're the wrong version for bcdboot. What you do is CD to the dir (h:\windows\system32 in the example) then run bcdboot with that as the current directory. That will cause bcdboot to pick up the right DLLs and it will work OK.