Well everyone is jumping on the Windows 7 bandwagon right about now and so will I. Although extremely happy with Jaunty I just had to try out the new Windows.
Originally I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft and tried it out through VirtualBox. I must first of all say that in my opinion it is a massive improvement on Vista. More responsive and an overall better look and feel. After tinkering for a few days I was going to put it on another machine. Unfortunately I didn’t have any DVD-RWs around and so I needed an alternative.
Having installed various Linux distros on my Eee PC I was relatively familiar with installing an OS from a USB stick. However would installing Windows to a USB stick with Ubuntu be the same?
Short answer : not really. Although easy, the experience with Windows requires a small amount of tinkering but is definitely still easy.
Firstly, through Synaptic or whatever you’re comfortable with, install GParted.
Secondly, get a USB stick, at least 4gb and using GParted format the stick to NTFS, and flag it as ‘boot’
Thirdly, download the Windows 7 ISO file from Microsoft and using your archive manager of choice extract all the files from it.
Lastly, copy all the files extracted from the ISO to the USB stick.
That should be it. A bootable USB stick with which you can install Windows 7.
Good Luck.
I tried it.
doesnt work.
usb boots and say ntldr not found
any idea?
Hey ydigit,
The closest answers I could find to your problem are here : http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=27049.
Sorry I wasn’t able to be more helpful. The method I describe definitely works, as I did it from start to finish myself.
Did you delete all the partitions from your USB stick?
Cheers,
Phil
thanks for your reply.
Your procedure of getting win7 on USB works !
I was able to get Win7 on USB and start installation process.
however at a stage win7 wanted to reboot (in typical windows style)
and that was it !
I could not proceed further with or without usb in slot.
with usb it went through the same installation process once again…
without usb it showed a blank screen with a blinking cursor.
any idea how to solve this restart problem?
thankfully i was able to restore MBR and boot back into ubuntu 9.04
Jimmy
Hey Jimmy,
When I did it the boot up immediately after installation took a LONG time. I’m talking maybe 5 – 10 minutes. I assumed that it had froze too. Maybe give it a little longer. If that doesn’t work I don’t think I can help you.
What hardware are you trying to install it on, does it meet Win 7’s requirements? I’m only clutching at straws now though.
Cheers,
Phil
Thank you!
im using gparted to formats to ntfs ,,but when i scroll over format to… ntfs isnt an option its faded out and i cant select it…so does this mean my usb cant be formatted to ntfs??
Hey Ari,
I don’t think it would be anything to do with your usb stick. I assume you’re on Ubuntu?
If so make sure ntfs support is installed. I think the package is ntfs-3g.
I found this, which might be able to help you.
Cheers
I tried this and unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
I dont see how this possibly *can* work, unless the stick already had a (windows) bootloader on the MBR. Windows 7, like any OS needs a bootloader. Just copying files doesn’t write to the MBR.
Vertigo,
I think you have misunderstood, this wasn’t to install Windows 7 to a USB stick, this is to install Windows 7 on a regular hard drive using a USB stick as opposed to a DVD-RW.
It definitely does work.
Phillip,
I have run into one issue with this so far-ISO-13346 support in Ubuntu 9.04. Apparently you can force it to be mounted (physical disc) by changing the fstab, but I’m not quite sure how to do that with an .ISO file since it’s not a physical device.
Here are a couple threads I’ve found so far.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=541579
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=246707
Anytime I mount/extract it I get the text file:
“This disc contains a “UDF” file system and requires an operating system
that supports the ISO-13346 “UDF” file system specification.”
Just a heads up. I’ll find a way around it.
Confirming that this does work. Other complicated stuff on the web about using Unetbootin and overwriting the syslinux file, or booting the iso using a virtual drive, etc etc is not necessary. (g)parted must be creating the boot sector or something when the flag is set. And after much other searching on the Internets trying to find a working explanation (Unetbootin didn’t work for me), I followed the simple steps listed in the OP to create a bootable USB for Windows 7:
1) Went to Gparted and formatted usb flash disk as ntfs (this step is probably not necessary)
2) set ‘boot’ flag, which took several seconds during which it was presumably creating boot code or something
3) opened Windows 7 dvd iso using default ‘Archive Manager’ in Ubuntu and extracted all files to usb flash disk
4) restarted selecting USB drive to boot and installed windows.
5) (reinstalled grub using Ubuntu LiveUSB and ’sudo grub-install –root-directory=/media/name-of-your-mounted-Ubuntu-partition hd0-or-”/dev/sda”-or-appropriate-MBR-location ‘)
If the USB disk won’t boot, that is a deficiency in your hardware or BIOS. If the iso won’t open in Ubuntu with a UDF error, you will need a different iso or find packages that allow Ubuntu to interact with that type of UDF filesystem. Mostly it’s just that certain UDF disks by Windows are created in a weird way. (sorry for doubleposting, brackets interpreted as HTML)
The fix for troubles with udf file system is to extract the image file onto the usb drive with acetoneiso.
When I try to open the ISO with the archive manager all I can see is a text file that says,
“This disc contains a “UDF” file system and requires an operating system
that supports the ISO-13346 “UDF” file system specification.
”
Ive searched everywhere but no one can help!
You haven’t searched “everywhere.” If you had, you’d have found this.
http://agnipulse.com/2008/08/easily-mount-iso-files-as-virtual-drives-in-ubuntu/