{"id":1285,"date":"2008-11-13T17:55:42","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T17:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm"},"modified":"2009-07-20T17:33:16","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T17:33:16","slug":"installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm","title":{"rendered":"Installing Windows from a USB drive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I downloaded the milestone 3 build of Windows 7 and installed it in a virtual machine.  Then I heard how Windows 7 has been tuned (compared with Vista) to run on lower-specification hardware so I decided to install it on my aging Compaq D510SFF, which is not going to give me blinding performance (particularly for graphics) but does at least have a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard disk so it shouldn&#8217;t be too bad either.<\/p>\n<p>I downloaded the 32-bit version (previously I&#8217;d used 64-bit), burned a DVD, popped it in the drive and booted:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Problem #1 &#8211; this PC has a CD-R drive and I have a DVD ISO.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The only DVD drives I had available were in my server (which I don&#8217;t want to take down right now) and in my work laptop (a slimline drive &#8211; with a strange connector on the back) so I went shopping for hardware:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><!-- Static Ad--><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplin.co.uk\/?C=AffilWin87738&#038;T=_109182\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.awin1.com\/cshow.php?v=1256&#038;s=109182&#038;r=87738\" alt=\"Maplin\" class=\"alternate\" \/><\/a>Problem #2 &#8211; my local branch of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.Maplin.co.uk\/?C=AffilWin87738\" target=\"_blank\">Maplin<\/a> had sold out of DVD drives and <!--Static Ad --><a href=\"http:\/\/www.awin1.com\/awclick.php?mid=1598&#038;id=87738\" target=\"_blank\">PC World<\/a> didn&#8217;t have any brown box ones (just the overpriced ones in a pretty box).<\/li>\n<li>(Problem #2a &#8211; markwilson.it has been spending too much on hardware recently and the bank balance is not looking too good.  Spending money on components for an aging PC does not make too much sense.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Back to the drawing board.  I could PXE boot to a Windows Deployment Services server but I didn&#8217;t really want to go to the effort of setting all that up so, after checking I hadn&#8217;t missed anything obvious with my trusted colleagues Dave and Garry, I turned my attentions to USB booting the PC.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Problem #3 &#8211;  the largest USB drive I have is 1GB &#8211; and a DVD .ISO is much bigger than that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I decided to see if I could use a USB hard disk and it turns out I can &#8211; this is how it works.  The advice is based on Vista but it works for later releases of Windows too:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Make some space on a hard disk for a new partition.  I shrank the existing volume in Disk Management to give me 32MB of free space but I could have just wiped the drive too.\n<\/li>\n<li>Dive into the command line and fire up <code>diskpart.exe<\/code>, issuing the following commands:\n<ul>\n<li><code>list disk<\/code> (to see the available disks and see which one I had just created 32MB of free space on)<\/li>\n<li><code>select disk <em>number<\/em><\/code><\/li>\n<li><code>clean<\/code> (skip this if you do not want to wipe the disk clean &#8211; i.e. if you want to keep data on other partitions)<\/li>\n<li><code>create partition primary<\/code><\/li>\n<li><code>select partition <em>number<\/em><\/code><\/li>\n<li><code>active<\/code><\/li>\n<li><code>format fs=fat32<\/code> (I later read that NTFS would work too but FAT32 worked for me on a relatively small partition like this)<\/li>\n<li><code>assign<\/code><\/li>\n<li><code>exit<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Copy the contents of the Windows installation DVD to the new partition with <code>xcopy <em>dvddrive<\/em>:\\*.* \/s \/e \/f <em>harddrive<\/em>:\\<\/code><\/li>\n<li>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/kurtsh.spaces.live.com\/blog\/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry\">the blog post from Kurt Shintaku that I used for reference<\/a>, that should be enough but that doesn&#8217;t actually create a boot sector.  <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/dglover\/archive\/2008\/09\/11\/creating-a-bootable-usb-windows-vista-drive.aspx\">Dave Glover&#8217;s post on the subject<\/a> alerted me to the presence of the <code>bootsect.exe<\/code> utility from the \\boot folder on the installation DVD and <code>bootsect \/nt60 <em>harddrive<\/em>:<\/code> successfully updated the bootcode on my USB hard drive.<\/li>\n<li>Boot the PC from USB and install Windows.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>And so does Windows 7 run well on that old PC?  I wish I could tell you but, unlike everyone who got their copy from PDC, those of us signed up via Microsoft Connect are under NDA&#8230; grrr.  What I can say is that, if you&#8217;re not bothered about high-end graphics, then even Vista will run on a PC like this&#8230; and based on what&#8217;s already been said by Microsoft I wouldn&#8217;t expect 7 to be any worse and it may even be slightly better. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I downloaded the milestone 3 build of Windows 7 and installed it in a virtual machine. Then I heard how Windows 7 has been tuned (compared with Vista) to run on lower-specification hardware so I decided to install it on my aging Compaq D510SFF, which is not going to give me blinding performance &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Installing Windows from a USB drive<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[144,98],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-windows-7","tag-windows-vista"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Installing Windows from a USB drive - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Installing Windows from a USB drive - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week I downloaded the milestone 3 build of Windows 7 and installed it in a virtual machine. Then I heard how Windows 7 has been tuned (compared with Vista) to run on lower-specification hardware so I decided to install it on my aging Compaq D510SFF, which is not going to give me blinding performance &hellip; Continue reading Installing Windows from a USB drive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/11\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-13T17:55:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2009-07-20T17:33:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.awin1.com\/cshow.php?v=1256&s=109182&r=87738\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Wilson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@markwilsonit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@markwilsonit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Wilson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Mark Wilson\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"headline\":\"Installing Windows from a USB drive\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-11-13T17:55:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-07-20T17:33:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\"},\"wordCount\":621,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/98f61365e7c39d6be942174b8c4de468\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.awin1.com\\\/cshow.php?v=1256&s=109182&r=87738\",\"keywords\":[\"Microsoft Windows 7\",\"Microsoft Windows Vista\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\",\"name\":\"Installing Windows from a USB drive - markwilson.it\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.awin1.com\\\/cshow.php?v=1256&s=109182&r=87738\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-11-13T17:55:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-07-20T17:33:16+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.awin1.com\\\/cshow.php?v=1256&s=109182&r=87738\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.awin1.com\\\/cshow.php?v=1256&s=109182&r=87738\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/2008\\\/11\\\/installing-windows-from-a-usb-drive.htm#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Installing Windows from a USB drive\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.markwilson.co.uk\\\/blog\\\/\",\"name\":\"markwilson.it\",\"description\":\"get-info -class technology | write-output &gt; 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Today, the new Akamai download links for \"top downloads\" delivered the Windows 7 RTM bits to me in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Lenovo\"","block_context":{"text":"Lenovo","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/lenovo"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1017,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/03\/burning-cdsdvds-in-windows-server-2008.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1285,"position":1},"title":"Burning CDs\/DVDs in Windows Server 2008","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 13 March 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the downsides of running Windows Server 2008 as a workstation operating system is the lack of native CD\/DVD-burning capabilities. Quite why Microsoft decided that administrators don't need to write optical discs from servers is anybody's guess but it's kept me busy for the last hour or so. First,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows Server 2008\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows Server 2008","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows-server-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":226,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/installing-windows-vista-december-ctp.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1285,"position":2},"title":"Installing the Windows Vista December CTP (build 5270)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 30 January 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"For a few days now, I've been struggling to get the December community technical preview (CTP) of Windows Vista installed on my notebook PC. I downloaded the DVD .ISO from Microsoft (twice, just to be sure my copy wasn't in some way corrupt) and it booted fine, but setup.exe kept\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Windows Vista\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Windows Vista","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/windows-vista"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":354,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/08\/burn-dvds-from-windows-command-line.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1285,"position":3},"title":"Burn DVDs from the Windows command line","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 21 August 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks back, I bought myself a Sony DWG120A DVD\u00c2\u00b1RW dual layer recorder. Although I picked mine up as a \u00c2\u00a329.99 brown box deal in PC World, it is available for less on the 'net (but that would have involved shipping costs and delays). It was a two-minute installation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Useful Software\"","block_context":{"text":"Useful Software","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/useful-software"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":795,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/05\/creating-a-media-center-mac.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1285,"position":4},"title":"Creating a Media Center Mac","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Saturday 19 May 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not often that I come away from a Microsoft event as excited as I was after the recent Vista after hours session. You see, we have a problem at home... our DVD player has stopped recognising discs. That shouldn't really be a problem (DVD players are cheap enough to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Apple Front Row\"","block_context":{"text":"Apple Front Row","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/front-row"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5412,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/short-takes-unicode-characters-in-windows-os-x-remote-disc-goes-awol.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1285,"position":5},"title":"Short takes: Unicode characters in Windows; OS X Remote Disc goes AWOL","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 21 November 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"More micro-posts from the collection of open tabs in my browser... Unicode characters in Windows Sometimes, when tweeting, it's useful to be able to type the unicode horizontal ellipsis (\u2026) rather than three full stops (...). It might look similar, but that's two less characters out of 140. \u00a0I remember\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}