Bootable Windows 7 USB Drive

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Ian

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Many of you may wish to install Windows 7 from a handy USB drive, rather than burning the install files to DVD. These 2 guides give a good overview on how to do this:

Seven steps to a bootable Windows 7 thumb drive:

The only tangible thing you’ll need is a USB thumb drive with at least 4GB of capacity. I found a SanDisk Cruzer Contour worked best, while a Kingston DataTraveler was a bit fidgety at first but worked after a couple of tries. It’s all pretty easy once you get going, so let’s begin.
Installing Windows 7 via USB or SD Media:

So Windows 7 beta is out the door and you are ready to begin your beta experience. Over the next few months there will be additional builds for Windows 7 (x86 and x64) as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 and that leads to a lot of installs and a lot of DVD burning and useless DVDs as soon as a new build is out. So why not install from USB or whatever other removable media your computer can boot from? Insert your removable media into a Windows XP or Vista PC and run the following commands from an elevated command prompt.
 
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Have followed your instructions to install to 4gb flash drive but have not run it yet.
Does the following apply to the flash drive install??
'You've got until 1st August 2009 - so a good few months yet:

Quote:
The Beta will stop working on August 1, 2009. To continue using your PC, please be prepared to reinstall a prior version of Windows or a subsequent release of Windows 7 before the expiration date. You won't be able to upgrade from the Beta to the final retail version of Windows 7.
Source : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...tructions.aspx
I do not have XP Home installation disk(s) therefore this is an issue. Do not know if I will purchase next version or not.
 

Ian

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Yes, that's correct - the Beta version you've got will stop running on 1st August 2009. It's a pre-release version of the full version of Windows 7 that will be out later this year. I'd only install it if you want to give it a try-out for the next few months, knowing that you'd need to buy the full version to continue using it.
 
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