Problem installing Win 7 from external USB hard drive

[Ivo]

So I received my shuttle PC and was eagerly going to install Win 7 on it from my external USB drive...

I was following this guide and the drive is ready
http://www.pcworld.com/article/165159/i ... drive.html

The BIOS sees the drive, I make it boot from there, and indeed instead of the previous "insert boot disk and press key to continue" or similar message, the PC now proceeds to a black screen with a blinking underscore on the top left corner... And stays there (still there).

So I presume I messed up somewhere. I tried just to double click the setup file from the Windows XP I have on this netbook (where I'm writing from) and it starts up the install process for Win 7 (but I cancel it at the first step as I don't want to install it here right now) - so it seems to be at least something working with the ISO (it is a legit University licence iso and I have the serial).

I don't know what to do from here as I have no clue what went wrong.
I have some suspicions:
Maybe the install drive can not have anything else?
Maybe the install drive needs to be in NTFS instead of FAT32 as I have it now?

In either of those cases it would actually need to be formatted (in that case I'll need to borrow a 4 GB memory stick as I don't have one here).

Maybe anyone that knows about this stuff can check the guide and see any errors in it, the steps seemed simple - make partition active, extract the iso into the drive, boot from it.

Ivo.

[Ziggy]

I'm kinda confused as to exactly you're doing. You have a 7 ISO on an external hard drive that you want to install on an internal hard drive in your shuttle PC?

If you have the ISO on the external, why not just burn it to a disc and install it that way?

[Ivo]

I'm kinda confused as to exactly you're doing. You have a 7 ISO on an external hard drive that you want to install on an internal hard drive in your shuttle PC?

If you have the ISO on the external, why not just burn it to a disc and install it that way?

That is correct, my end goal is getting it installed into the internal drive of the shuttle. I extracted the ISO onto the external hard drive as if it was a DVD. The only differences from a DVD is that:

1. It has other files together with it. I already tried not having them in the root of the drive, e.g. I put them "hidden" inside one of the subfolders that the iso extracted to.

2. It is not a DVD, it is a hard drive with FAT32 file system (I don't know what the file system of the DVD would be, so maybe this is the problem?)

3. I used 7-zip to extract it, instead of burning software - but I believe that shouldn't be a problem -

For reference, the iso extracted into 5 folders (boot, efi, sources, support, upgrade) and 3 files (autorun.inf, bootmgr, setup.exe) so it looks like it worked properly.



As for the other question, I don't want to use a DVD for now because it is easier to borrow a flash drive than to get what I need to go the DVD route in this case. I know that something like this should work with Win 7, maybe the guide I have is just missing something. But if I don't get it to work with my external (which I don't want to format) and also fail with a formatted 4GB USB stick (I think I'll be able to borrow one, should have brought mine from back home) I'll have to go through DVD somehow...

Ivo.

[Betamax001]

The added benefit of burning the ISO to a DVD or CD (Not sure how big the Windows 7 ISO is, since it's newer, it's most likely a DVD) is that you easily have access to the disc in case you have to reinstall the OS for whatever reason.

[Ivo]

The added benefit of burning the ISO to a DVD or CD (Not sure how big the Windows 7 ISO is, since it's newer, it's most likely a DVD) is that you easily have access to the disc in case you have to reinstall the OS for whatever reason.

Fair enough, but I'm keeping the .iso file around anyway...

Ivo.

[VGMStudios]

TWO questions for ya. do you

On my Acer Aspire One, for instance, a tap of F12 during the POST screen lets me choose my desired boot drive.

and is the ISO that you extracted to the partitioned external HDD bootable?
if it isnt a bootable ISO I dont think it would work.


VGM out...

[casterofdreams]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98xlSjTyCaQ

This is exactly what you need to do to have the bios read the drive in its entirety and know what to do with it. It will take about 20 min but afterward it will be golden.

[Ivo]

Casterofdreams, thanks for the link.

In the end I borrowed a 4GB usb stick. I didn't follow that guide as I was preparing the USB stick on XP, not on Vista, and some things don't work the same way.

But through the diskpart method of the youtube link I managed to find another interesting guide for XP where I needed to donwload some extra software to do what Vista would have done.
Here is the guide that worked for me in the end (together with the USB stick)
http://www.bwana.org/2009/01/11/how-to- ... out-vista/

In hindsight I think what I could have done with the external, despite the extra files, was mount the thing through Daemon Tools and do the bootsect /nt60 thing. But who knows... Now it is solved and I didn't format my external drive so I'm happy.

Ivo.