Windows 7 beta 1 - netbook install guide

With all the news about Windows 7 beta 1 leaking onto the torrent trackers, I figured it was time to writeup a Windows 7 netbook install guide. I've just installed beta 1 on my HP Mini (deleted the old build 6956 partition), and after I come back, will update you on how it runs.

What you need
netbook
Windows 7 beta 1 DVD image (Google search it)
minimum 4GB USB drive (I used a 120GB Western Digital Passport)
optional: a second flash drive to run GParted

To prepare the bootable USB drive

Plug the drive into your computer.

Right-click on a link to “My Computer” and select the “Manage” menu option to enter the Computer Management application. In the left menu pane of Computer Management, under the “Storage” title, select the “Disk Management” tool. 

Select the USB drive, right click, and select the “Shrink Volume” option. Shrink the volume by at least 3000 MB, though to be on the safe side, I recommend 5000 to 10000 MB.

  

(Click images for full size)

Right click the unallocated volume and select “Format”. For formatting options, you can have the volume named presumably anything you want, but it MUST have a FAT32 file system, and unless you have time to spare, check the Quick Format box. Once the volume has been made, right click it and select “Mark partition as Active”.

Mount the Windows 7 DVD image using Daemon Tools or your DVD imaging program of choice, and copy all of the DVD files to your new volume. While the 2.45 GB of files are copying, go get yourself a coffee.

Partitioning the Hard Drive

Download the latest LiveUSB release of GParted partition manager, and create a bootable USB using these steps. I highly recommend using the LiveUSB Helper application, as it makes things very easy. I loaded GParted onto a spare 512MB flash drive that I had lying around, so that I can keep it to use on any of my machines instead of having to use a LiveCD.

Installing Windows

Now, plug your USB drive into the netbook, and turn it on. When it reaches the boot screen, have it boot from the USB drive. (Pressing F9 on the HP Mini gives you a menu to select bootable drives from, other netbooks are similar, or you can enter the BIOS and change the boot order manually so that it boots to the USB drive.)

Wait for the Windows files to load and for it to get to the Windows 7 install screen. Hit the big “Install Now” button to get to the “Collecting Information” stage. Click yes to all the legal bull, select Custom install (presuming you want to dual boot….I don’t recommend using a beta Microsoft OS as the primary operating system), then select the partition or unallocated space you want to install to. Hit enter, sit back, and wait for it to finish installing. In the mean time, don’t unplug anything. After its done, voila, you have a dual booting netbook running Windows 7 beta 1. Pretty simple, no?

Comments

[Dominic]

Can someone give me the link to where to download the Windows 7 beta 1 DVD image

[Dominic]

Why wont my usb drive let me do the shrink option?

[Sham]

I have an HP Mini 1035nr and I'm looking to try this as soon as the official beta is released on MSDN.

I was just curious as to how it worked out of the box with the drivers? Does everything work, or did you need to install specific drivers (e.g.: wireless, bluetooth, 3G, LAN, USB LAN, sound, etc.)?

Thanks for the fantastic guide!

[Yasser]

You don't really need to go thru the external USB boot. As with Vista, you can install it directly from the CD mount. Make sure you select clean install and not upgrade.
After it is done file copying, it will reboot and complete the setup from the Win7 PE (Preinstallation Environment).

[Max]

Are you able to precise the Live USB / GParted section. Downloaded Live USB but my external drive does not show up in Live USB. (Only a flash drive I tested). 9 GB Fat 32 Active Partition on my external 250GB USB 2.0 drive.

[The Jerk]

This is great, but can anyone point me in the right direction to do this all from within Ubuntu? This beta will be the only Windows OS in the house. The trouble for me is it won't let me install Windows 7 to a ntfs or FAT32 formatted USB hard drive. I'm on an Acer Aspire One, if that matters to anyone. Thanks.

[luka]

what are the minimum specs for this beta? can i run it on my intel P3 for fun?

[OSNEWS ROCKS]

To the author

if you installed it in a usb drive can you boot the usb drive on other machines?

im just wondering if it is possible to install windows 7 on usb drive and boot it to other machines.

thanks

[Tristan]

Uhm, I guess I'm sort of confused. I'm not sure when the "liveusb" part comes in. I mean, i got to the install screen for windows 7, but I can't install it on my external hard drive (a WD Passport as well, but a larger model). I'm assuming I missed a step somewhere.

[dkostas]

This does not work, or some details in the process are missing. The fact is that Windows 7 can not be installed on USB or Firewire HDD (at least not using standard method). Moreover, when you do installation it asks for NTFS partition, so if you have FAT32 partition, you have to partition it before you begin installation and then you will loose all your installation files. Finally, why do I need LiveUSB release of GParted partition manager? No info where to use it.

[Judas]

Yes believe there is something fishy going on... Skipping the part not burning the ISO are no solution either. As previous Windows 7 will not install on external drives (USB or Firewire). LiveUSB would make that possible but I don't know how the author made it possible using LiveUSB on his setup. I only see flash drive possibles. "then select the partition or unallocated space you want to install to" this post is not well written if it's supposed to be installed on the internal drive. So author are you able to precise

[Tim]

I did all of the steps and when I got to the actual install I ran into the same problem as dkostas. I cannot install onto a USB drive or a FAT32 formatted drive. Help?

[Sam]

I think this article assumes you know what your doing. The heading "Partioning the HD" tells your to download gParted. This is the step in which you should boot up with that thumbdrive that Gparted is installed on (the Fat 32) and then use gparted to setup your partition for Windows 7. This partition wouldnt have to be big, just enough for Windows 7 to fit on. You can then download files and such to the partition that already has XP or Vista on it.

I will point out that I have made partitions using Partition Magic several times in Windows XP to accomplish the same thing for a dual boot linux/xp.

Anytime you make a partition onto a drive that isnt empty BE WARNED, there is a chance that you can cause DAMAGE to the file system so be sure to backup any important stuff you have. Luckily most netbooks shouldnt have lots of important files on them.

[Tim]

I think I figured out what our problem is dkostas. This is not a guide to install windows 7 onto an external HD, but FROM an external HD. You can't install it to an external.

[Sam]

Yes Tim, thats it exactly

[invictus]

your full of it, does not work what so ever

[Agustus]

Why use this stupid method then? Why a flashdrive of more than 4 GB ? When DVD is only 2.6 GB? Yes LiveUSB make your FLASH DRIVE bootable. Why GParted then? Belive Windows 7 do alot better work togeter (managing your bootsectors) with your other oses (if not *inx) my setup with vista earlier gives me a promt to choose and can change what os to "auto" start within vista or windows 7. Not such of an technician written this "tutorial". Stupiest and most weightless in a long time (:

[Vivek - The Technicist]

The goal here was to install Windows 7 onto a second partition in the main hard drive, WITHOUT using an external DVD drive (which would understandably make things a lot easier). This isn't to install Win7 to a bootable external hard drive. This is to install Win7 *from* an external hard drive, necessitated by the lack of an internal or external DVD drive (netbooks don't have internal dvd drives, and a lot of people I know don't have external dvd drives).

As said by some others in the comments, the GParted LiveUSB comes in because you need to partition the hard drive (unless you plan to run Win7 as your primary OS).

As for Sham, mostly everything on the HP Mini works properly with generic drivers, except for the Webcam/mic. I'll post an update on this in the first week of the new year.

[invictus]

partition the hard drive? this is the issue everyone seems to be having. No one can seem to shrink the external hdd or unable to Mark partition as Active. So I call BS

[dkostas]

If this setup is for Windows 7 installation into internal HDD then it will probably work, but that is not clear from the article. I suggest for moderators to take some action and remove this article (or to correct it), since it makes too many misunderstandings and because many of those who will try to follow will waste many hours for nothing. I personally spend a lot of my time for nothing, because to install Windows 7 into internal HDD is nothing new and easy to do. If this setup is for those who do not have DVD-ROM, then it should be stated in the first sentence of this article.

[Dustin]

Does the Win7 install make it so that than your computer boots it asks you which OS to run?

[michael]

tried to follow instructions, however when I went to boot from USB HD after copying files from the iso, I get a black screen that mentions removing media and hitting any key to restart, if I unplug the USB drive and hit a key it boots back into windows, any suggestions?

[elliot]

This writer is assuming you'll assume, like he did. I had to read it 10 times to get some kind of understanding.

He wants you to install 7 on your computer's hard drive. He doesn't say it outright, but he jumps to the part where you have windows 7 burnt to a disc.. at this point he says to copy it to your USB drive..

The confusing part is he called his external drive, "USB DRIVE" and then he calls his 512MB flash drive, "USB FLASH DRIVE". Let's just ignore this and then build an android. We'll call the android robot, and then buy a robot to help build the android. INSTRUCTIONS: Get your robot ready. Then upload the firmware to the android/robot. Be ready to turn off your robot, not the other robot. I meant to say the android, You should be ready to go.

pretty easy, no?

[zullcore]

My pendrive is 1 giga.. it is possible??

[lusobrasil]

hi

I have a dvd image of the new Windows 7 build 6801.
follow all the steps through the Microsoft Virtual PC.
but when the screen appears to install Windows 7, I click
install the button now, after a few seconds appears to me the following message

WINDOWS COUlD NOT COLLECT INFORMATION FOR (OSImage) SINCE THE
SPICIFIED IMAGE FILE (INSTALL.WIN) DOES NOT EXIST

Who knows what should I do?
I appreciate your help.

greetings to all
lusobrasil
portugal

[lusobrasil]

hi
I have a dvd image of the new Windows 7 build 6801.
follow all the steps through the Microsoft Virtual PC.
but when the screen appears to install Windows 7, I click
install the button now, after a few seconds appears to me the following message

WINDOWS COUlD NOT COLLECT INFORMATION FOR (OSImage) SINCE THE
SPICIFIED IMAGE FILE (INSTALL.WIN) DOES NOT EXIST

Who knows what should I do?
I appreciate your help.

greetings to all
lusobrasil
portugal

[dimdig]

why couldnt you just shrink the drive without using gparted?
then install windows 7 to that from the pen drive?

[asd]

WOW...after reading the comments posted here...i can conclude that alot of d readers here is either a dumba$$ or stupid fcuks! This guide is ONLY used for installing Windows 7 on NETBOOKS...u dumbfcuks!If all of u know what NETBOOKS r in d 1st place...u wont look/sound do dumb afterall. Netbooks doesnt have DVD-drive...so d only way to install windows 7 is by using either USB external drive, USB flash drive OR USB External DVD-drives....what am i doing explaining this to dumbasses anyway...

[E]

I was able to successfully install on a Dell Mini 12.
Prerequisites: USB Flash drive (bootable), Windows 7 beta iso, Daemon Tools, and basic command-line skills.

After you've downloaded Windows 7 iso and mounted using daemon tools or similar, plugged in your USB drive backup everything on it b/c you're going to *ERASE* all the data during the format.

Open cmd prompt (Windows-R, type "cmd", hit enter) then type the following...
1.) diskpart
(will bring up a prompt from the diskpart program)
2.) select disk 1
(or whichever is your USB drive - it *MUST* be listed here to be bootable - I wasted many hours trying to boot from a drive that wasn't bootable)
3.) clean
4.) create partition primary
5.) select partition 1
6.) active
7.) format fs=fat32
(the drive *MUST* be formatted as FAT32 to work)
8.) assign
9.) exit

Now copy all of the data from the mounted iso to the USB drive - here we assume your mounted image is D: and your drive is E:
xcopy D:\*.* /e/s/f E:\

Now set the drive as bootable using bootsect.exe (in the boot folder of your win7 iso) again we assume that in the cmd prompt you navigated to the directory where bootsect.exe is and that your USB drive is E:
.\bootsect.exe /nt60 E:

Now Eject the USB drive and set your BIOS for your netbook to boot from USB - plugin the USB drive and proceed to install from there.

A word of caution - my "upgrade" install took 3 hours to complete and once done Aero defaulted to "Aero basic" so I think there are some issues w/ Win7 on netbooks (not fully baked as of yet - duh - it's a BETA!!!!!)

Your mileage may vary

[Not You]

Morons need to settle down a little bit.

Flash Drive is just that, a flash drive.

USB Drive aka USB Hard Drive is quite a bit bigger than a flash drive.

Point is, they are two different entities; two different physical drives.

If this is difficult for you to comprehend, you need not be messing with dual-booting and should instead keep fiddling with your iMacs.

[cabezud]

Has anyone tried this with BitLocker? I was wondering if the encryption gets in the way of dual booting in any way.

[Josh]

I feel kind of stupid, but would you be able to do this by just burning the iso to a dvd instead of putting it on a flash drive?

[Mathew7]

To all that did not get why they need USB flash drive and why not install from DVD I ask you: Why are you reading this article? It clearly states in the title and requirements "netbook", and all those who have one know it lacks optical drive. Since USB optical drives are not cheap (easily getting to half of the netbook price), buying one will defeat the purpose of the netbook (if you have money to buy external optical then you should have money on a full-option small laptop).
While it would have been wise to add this information, to those to whom the article is addressed it's redundant.

[Greg Zeng]

Like Vista, does Windows-7 NTFS have a NTFS-format slightly incompatible with all previous versions of NTFS e.g. compression, encryption, permissions, etc?

[alphaaskins]

my netbook is installed with Linpus orginally. i have extract the windows 7 image to a 4G usb drive and plug it into the netbook. but when i chose usb to be the boot device, a black screen appear and never go to the installation screen.

Any idea?

[Derek Baynes]

I downloaded the the zip file and am having trouble creating the ISO file . HELP!!!!

[Dan Dar3]

Windows 7 beta build 7000 can be downloaded from here
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

@lusobrasil
You went through a whole lot of trouble for nothing, you can simply create a new virtual machine and then mount the ISO file using the Virtual PC menus. That would boot the ISO image as it would've booted if you wrote the DVD in the first place...

[Tyler]

You people are unbelievable. I don't know where any of you got the idea that this was a guide on how to install win7 to a usb external drive. It's pretty obviously not so stop complaining that it doesn't work. It's a guide for installing win7 on a netbook that's without a dvd drive. Secondly, for all the people asking if a 1gb or 2gb flash drive will work do you really think the 2.6gb of installation files are gonna fit on it? Finally for the moron giving him shit about saying you need a 4gb flash drive when the install files are only 2.6gb and calling the article trash, when was the last time you saw a 2.6gb flash drive? how about a 3gb flash drive? So wouldnt that make 4gb the smallest commerically available flash drive that you could use? /facepalm

[Rzee]

It seems like the one step this walkthrough is missing is the fact that the author talks about installing windows 7 on an external drive. But, by default usb drives are not bootable.
To make a usb external drive bootable I think you need to do some command line scripting. I got mine from this website link below.
http://garyshortblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/how-to-install-windows-7-beta-on-an-acer-aspire-one-netbook/

(step 8) "Using bootsect, we’ll make the USB drive a bootable NTFS drive, ready for a Windows 7 image (my drive was labeled G):
bootsect /nt60 G:"

You might want to read the previous steps. I'm no computer expert I just thought this would be helpful to people on this comment page seeing microsoft just enabled their download servers again for wiindows 7.

[Rzee]

Please ignore my comment. It seems like I misunderstood the article I quoted from If you read my first comment.

[Chad]

This is not working for me at all. I was one hour into the install on my Aspire One (SSD 8GB version), after its 2nd reboot
it tells me that it is not compatible with the hardware??? Then I rebooted again, it now tells me “windows could not complete the installation. To install windows on this computer, restart the installation”

What’s going on? I’m running the official W7 Beta 7000 build on my Aspire One 8GB SSD version.

[Rzee]

Hey Chad just wandering, is the 64 or 32 bit version ur running??

[Ajmal]

I have tried to install windows 7 on a virtual machine using MS Virtual PC as well but I get the error 'ndis.sys file missing or corrupted, please insert disc' Does anyone know what this means?

[James]

Hi there, Im using a netbook with XP Home Edition, and i get so far installing and it says 'Unable to install' Something about im not allowed to modify the boot sequence

Any suggestions how to get round this, cause i really want windows 7 on my netbook

[Robert]

HI, i cannot shrink the size of the external hdd, why is is? and is there a way to get around it?

[Robert]

BTW, its a WD 640Gb hdd, if it helps