Issues with XP to 7 via external hard drive

Hello,

I am trying to wipe my current XP installation clean and move on to Windows 7.

I first tried to install the setup.exe (Custom install option of course) from within the XP OS, but soon discovered you cannot do that and wipe out my only partition on C: at the same time.

I don't have a DVD-RW drive to write a boot disk, so instead I am trying to install through my external hard drive. I meticulously followed this tutorial from PC World yet when I instruct the PC in BIOS to boot from the external hard drive, I keep getting an "invalid system disk, press any key" error when the computer boots and looks for the setup files. This is despite the fact that setup seems to work perfectly from within the XP OS.

PC World tutorial:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/16515...ard_drive.html


Can anyone please offer me any helpful advice to get the external hard drive setup to work or help me find a way to install 7 from within XP?

Hi Wimb - Welcome to w7forums

How To Make Bootable USB - This would also work for External Hard-drives as well as USB sticks. I have used this method and setup a Bootable Windows 7 Recovery Media.

How to Install Windows 7 from USB? Microsoft Launches a New Utility. I think I would have chosen this method if I had seen it first.

Thanks for your reply!

The first tutorial cannot be done in XP, so that is out for me.

I will reasearch the Windows tool mentioned in the second link.

Do you or anyone know exactly why I keep getting the "invalid disk" error each time when I try to boot from my external hard drive? As mentioned in the PC World tutorial, I marked the external hard drive as an active partition and the setup files seem to work fine from within XP. If it helps, in the external hard drive root folder is both the Windows 7 ISO and all the files contained (which I extracted using PowerISO).

From XP you cannot properly format the disk to boot Windows Vista or Windows 7 without the proper tools. XP just does not have the tools needed to create the Vista Boot Manager needed to boot the DVD or operating system.

I wasn't thinking about this when I suggested the first link or I would have known the link would not work in XP for you.

Do you not have access to a Vista or Win7 machine so that you can create the media on the stick or ext drive?