creating Windows 7 installation USB from Ubuntu 12.04 and failing ...

[Francis Apfelbeck]

Hi to all, I need to reinstall Windows 7 on my girlfriend's computer (netbook) using USB drive and I'm failing to do so. First I have tried to install Gparted and format the drive to ntfs based on  this manual http://www.webupd8.org/2010/10/create-bootable-windows-7-usb-drive.html which seems to work. In the next step I have installed Unetbootin but I did not manage to install the older version which is suppose to allow to create Windows 7 image based on ntfs, new version is suppose to cause troubles based on the manual (and now on my experience). If I format the drive to ntfs in the gparted, the Unetbootin doesn't recognize the drive as available and tells me to format it to fat32, which if I do it recognize the drive, do the installation of the ISO image but when I restart the computer it gives me the option to boot at the beginning from the USB but there is no select able option to click on, no Windows 7 installation available, so no good. I'm now trying the terminal approach now fallowing this manual http://anl4u.com/blog/how-to-create-live-bootable-usb-via-terminal-in-linux/ I have successfully formatted the drive to ntfs file system  sudo mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdc1 which took a while but it worked and I used the dd command to create the bootable device from it using the Windows 7 iso image sudo dd if=/home/algoldor/Downloads/Windows7Ultimate/Windows7Ultimate.iso of=/dev/sdc It took a while to happen but it worked (well I did not wrote the message down, mistake but it was claiming to finish successfully). I've tried to reboot the computer and nothing, I just booted to my Ubuntu distro (and I have USB booting as priority in BIOS). I'm getting this output when using mount command /dev/sdb on /media/CD_ROM type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500,uhelper=udisks) and this if using df -lh /dev/sdb        3.5G  3.5G     0 100% /media/CD_ROM Please note that this is 16 GB memory stick. So now, what can I do to either to create the bootable installation USB with Windows 7 on it or what is the other way to install windows 7 on a netbook which is connected to the network - final plan is dual boot with Linux (Ubuntu or Mint) and Windows 7.  Please note that I do not have LAN yet, I have a problem to set up my own router somehow (next thing to sort out), so just direct connection to the Internet not to my Ubuntu machine. Many thanks for any info, Sincerely from Jeju, FAA Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

[Rory Browne]

I don't understand everything in your post ( or know anything about unetbootin ), but I'd always recommend using native tools where possible when dealing with filesystems. Particularly ones hosting OSs. This would be the mkfs.* for linux fs's, and the win 7 install disk for creating the win 7 ntfs filesystem.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Galway Linux Users' Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to galway-lug+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to galwa...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/galway-lug?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Jeroen Lodewijks]

Hi Francis,

"
based on ntfs, new version is suppose to cause troubles based on the manual (and now on my experience). If I format the drive to ntfs in the gparted, the Unetbootin doesn't recognize the drive as available and tells me to format it to fat32, which if I do it recognize the drive, do the installation of the ISO image but when I restart the computer it gives me the option to boot at the beginning from the USB but there is no select able option to click on, no Windows 7 installation available, so no good.
"

Question: When you have formatted the USB stick with gparted, did you mount it?

I would manually mount it, to a place where all users have permissions OR start unetbootin in root mode (sudo).

Now unetbootin should find the NTFS formatted drive I think.