Home Business IT Technology Installing Windows 7 from a USB flash stick
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Microsoft has made Windows 7 release candidate 1 available. Yet, it is a DVD image - what if you want to try it on a netbook or an ultra-slim laptop without a built-in optical drive? Here is how to make a bootable USB memory stick to install it from.

Windows 7 is available now for MSDN and TechNet subscribers as well as members of various other Microsoft programs. It will be made available on May 5th for the general public to try out also.

The method of installation is to burn the .iso image file onto a blank DVD disc. You can boot from the DVD you have made, or you can run it from within an existing Windows installation. Yet, if you do not have an optical drive on your computer of choice then booting from DVD is not really an option.

You can extract all the files to a USB stick using a free open source program like 7-Zip. This allows you to run the Windows 7 setup program from your DVD-challenged computer by plugging in the USB stick.

Of course, that only works if your target machine already has a version of Windows installed on it. It won’t give you the most flexibility, either – because you’re running the setup from within Windows you won’t have options to repartition the hard drive if so desired (to collapse two partitions into one, for instance.)

What would be really helpful is a bootable USB stick. So, here’s how to make one.

First, download the Windows 7 .iso image from MSDN or TechNet, or from Microsoft’s download site when it comes available.

Next, insert a USB stick. Be sure to back up anything you wish to retain because anything already on the USB stick will be lost during this process.

Format the USB drive using the NTFS file system. You can do this by double-clicking “My Computer” or “Computer” (for Vista users) and then right-clicking on the drive that represents the USB stick. A quick format is fine, the important thing is to ensure you specify NTFS and not FAT as the file system.

We must next resort to the command line. Click Start/Programs/Accessories. Right-click on the “Command Prompt” icon and opt to Run as Administrator. Windows Vista may bring up a UAC window asking for confirmation; allow it.

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David M Williams

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David has been computing since 1984 where he instantly gravitated to the family Commodore 64. He completed a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from 1990 to 1992, commencing full-time employment as a systems analyst at the end of that year. Within two years, he returned to his alma mater, the University of Newcastle, as a UNIX systems manager. This was a crucial time for UNIX at the University with the advent of the World-Wide-Web and the decline of VMS. David moved on to a brief stint in consulting, before returning to the University as IT Manager in 1998. In 2001, he joined an international software company as Asia-Pacific troubleshooter, specialising in AIX, HP/UX, Solaris and database systems. Settling down in Newcastle, David then found niche roles delivering hard-core tech to the recruitment industry and presently is the Chief Information Officer for a national resources company where he particularly specialises in mergers and acquisitions and enterprise applications.

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