Microsoft has just released a developer preview of their upcoming operating system Windows 8. Users from all over the world can download the preview and install it on their systems. There is only one restriction with regards to the installation: You cannot update an existing copy of Windows, the Windows 8 installation requires a clean install.

I thought it would be perfect for my Acer notebook. It is fairly underpowered by today’s standards, and does not come with a DVD drive which I could use otherwise to install Windows 8.

The only viable option in this case is to install from USB keys, sticks or drives. Installation is a little bit difficulty, as it requires more preparation than just burning an ISO image to disk and putting that ISO into the DVD drive of the computer.

You need an USB key with at least four Gigabytes of free space. The first step is to format the key with the FAT32 file system. This is done by connecting the USB key to the computer, right-clicking its drive letter and selecting Format from the options. The Format window pops up where you need to make sure that Fat32 is the selected file system. Everything else can be left as is.

Wait until the formatting has finished. You now need access to the Windows 8 ISO or DVD. The developer preview is only provided as an ISO image. Check out Windows 8 Download for instructions or download the developer preview right here.

The easiest way to copy Windows 8 to an USB drive and make that drive bootable at the same time is to use Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. While designed specifically for Windows 7, it appears to work just fine to create a bootable Windows 8 USB key as well.

Just select the Windows 8 ISO when asked to pick an ISO image from the computer. Then select to copy the contents to an USB drive. The program will copy all files to the drive and make that drive bootable at the same time. You can download the Microsoft tool from here.

Install Windows 8

You plug in your USB key into the computer you want to install Windows 8 on. You need to tell the computer on first start to boot from USB and not from hard drive or another location. This is done in the Bios. You usually enter the Bios with F1, F1, Delete, Esc or another key that is highlighted on the screen on Post. Press that key and look for an entry that says Boot or Boot order and make sure that USB has the highest priority on the system. You can easily repeat the steps if the computer is not booting from USB.

The computer should pick up the installation files on the USB drive automatically and installation should commence.

Windows 8 has the following system requirements:

1 Gigahertz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1 Gigabyte of RAM for 32-bit, 2 Gigabytes of RAM for 64-bit minimum
16 Gigabyte hard drive for 32-bit systems, 20 Gigabyte for 64-bit systems
Direct X 9 graphics card
Update: It is also possible to install Windows 8 by mounting the ISO image directly on another Windows system. The instructions have been posted on Reddit (via):

If you want to install the Windows Developer Preview, but have no blank DVDs or usable thumb drives, fear not. It’s fairly simple. This assumes you are installing the preview on a computer already running Windows, of course.

Download the ISO file from Microsoft.
Mount the ISO using Daemon Tools, Clone Drive, or similar.
This is important. Do not use the autorun installer. The autorun installer only allows you to upgrade your existing Windows installation and will not allow you to install to a separate hard drive or partition.
Navigate to the virtual install disc and go to the folder called “sources”.
Run setup.exe and proceed as if installing Windows Vista or 7.

The Windows 8 developer preview is out for all to try, but installing it over your main Windows setup is a scary (and unrealistic) prospect. Here’s how to dual boot Windows 8 with your current Windows 7 installation so you can run them both side by side.
If you’ve ever dual booted a machine before, this shouldn’t seem too foreign. All you need to do is create a new partition for Windows 8, install it on that partition, and then edit your new boot menu so Windows 7 stays the default OS. Here’s how to do it.

Step One: Create a New Partition

Before you start, make a backup of your data—you’re going to be formatting drives and installing OSes, so anything could go wrong, and you don’t want to lose your whole system. When you’re ready, we’ll need to create some space for Windows 8 on your hard drive. Assuming you have at least 20GB of space free on your drive, you’re going to use Windows’ Disk Management to set partition those 20GB for Windows 8. Open the Start Menu and right click on the “Computer” option. Click “Manage”, and in the window that appears, click on “Disk Management” in the left sidebar.

Find your system hard disk in the graphical list that appears in the bottom pane. Right-click on it and then click “Shrink Volume”. Shrink it down so you have at least 20GB of space left on the end of the drive, and click OK. Then, click on the “Unallocated” block of that drive that appears and click “New Simple Volume”. Click Next on the next few windows until you get to the “Format Partition” window. Here, give it a volume label you’ll recognize (like “Windows 8″) and click Next. It should format the drive for you. Now you’re all set to install Windows 8.

Step Two: Install Windows 8

If you haven’t downloaded the Developer Preview ISO yet, head over to the Windows Developer Center and download it. Burn it onto a DVD using something like ImgBurn,or burn it to a thumb drive if you don’t have a DVD drive in your machine. Make sure your computer is set to boot from CD or USB, stick in your installation media, and reboot.

If you get a prompt to “Press any key to boot from DVD”, then hit a key on your keyboard. You should boot right into the Windows 8 installer. It actually looks almost exactly like the Windows 7 installer, so it should seem a little familiar. Just pick your language, hit “Install Now”, and choose “Custom” when asked what type of install you’d like to perform.

On the next screen, find your new partition on the list of drives. Make sure it’s the right one, because you’re about to write over whatever’s on it. Hit “Next” and let the installer do its thing. When you’re done, your computer should reboot into Windows 8. It’ll probably reboot one more time after it does, then you’ll be greeted with the Windows 8 Start screen. If you choose to enter a Windows Live ID here, make sure you have access to your email and can confirm your computer—otherwise it might not let you boot into it.

Step Three: Make Windows 7 the Default (Optional)

You’ll notice when you first boot up into Windows 8 that you’re presented with a new graphical boot menu that’ll let you choose between your Windows 7 and Windows 8 installations. Windows 8 will be the default, meaning if you don’t manually choose Windows 7 from the menu, your computer will boot into Windows 8 after three seconds of inactivity. Chances are, you don’t want to make Windows 8 the default quite yet, so here’s how to make Windows 7 the default.

On the boot menu, click on the button at the bottom that says “Change Defaults or Choose Other Options”, and hit “Choose the Default Operating System”. From there, you can pick Windows 7 from the menu. From now on, your computer will boot into Windows 7 by default, but if you feel like playing around with Windows 8 that day, you can just pick it from the boot menu. Enjoy playing with the developer preview, and let us know what you think in the comments.

The tool, when directed to use an ISO dumped via ImgBurn, would error out. Everything was to UDF spec, so what was going on here?

I’m not a UDF expert, hell not even a novice, but I skimmed through ECMA-167 and the reflected tool code. It appears there are two (possibly more) “navigation buoys” within UDF-formatted ISOs that point to important chunks of the image called Anchor Volume Descriptor Pointers (AVDPs). The first AVDP is somewhere near the top of the image. The last AVDP is located in what appears to be the last logical block of the image. (My guess is this is to support bi-directional reading.)

So assuming each logical block of the image is 2048 bytes large, one could also assume the last logical block is –2048 from the end of the file, right? Well, that’s what the tool assumes. It checks for the last AVDP at the start of the last logical block, doesn’t find it, and bombs out.

I haven’t read through the entire spec., but I doubt there’s anything in here regarding the container of the UDF formatted data.

While one could argue Microsoft Store-downloaded ISOs are comprised in a compatible manner and therefore this scenario is unsupported it wouldn’t have been hard to add some AVDP seeking code.

As a quick hack to resolve this issue, I wrote a tool that merely finds the AVDP in your ISO file and copies it to offset (EOF-2048). This will allow you to use your own ISOs with the Microsoft tool. Microsoft.NET 2.x or higher required.

Source: http://withinwindows.com

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file on a USB flash drive or a DVD. To create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive, download the ISO file and then run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool. Once this is done, you can install Windows 7 directly from the USB flash drive or DVD.

The ISO file contains all the Windows 7 installation files combined into a single uncompressed file. When you download the ISO file, you need to copy it to some medium in order to install Windows 7. This tool allows you to create a copy of the ISO file to a USB flash drive or a DVD. To install Windows 7 from your USB flash drive or DVD, all you need to do is insert the USB flash drive into your USB port or insert your DVD into your DVD drive and run Setup.exe from the root folder on the drive.

Note: You cannot install Windows 7 from the ISO file until you copy it to a USB flash drive or DVD with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool and install from there.

The copy of the ISO file that the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool creates is bootable. Bootable media allows you to install Windows 7 without having to first run an existing operating system on your machine. If you change the boot order of drives in your computer’s BIOS, you can run the Windows 7 installation directly from your USB flash drive or DVD when you turn on your computer. Please see the documentation for your computer for information on how to change the BIOS boot order of drives.

You may make one copy of the ISO file on a disc, USB flash drive or other media in order to install the software on a computer. Once you have installed the software on a computer, the license terms that accompany the software apply to your use of the software and replace these terms. The license terms for Windows 7, once accepted, permit you to make one copy of the software as a back-up copy for reinstallation on the licensed computer. If you do not delete the copy of the ISO file you made to install the software on your computer, then the copy of the ISO file constitutes your back-up copy.

Installation

To install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool:

Click here to download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool installation file.

When you are prompted to either save the file to disk or run it, choose Run.

Follow the steps in the setup dialogs. You’ll have the option to specify where to install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool and whether to create shortcuts on your Start Menu or Windows Desktop.

You need to be an administrator on the computer you are installing the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool on. The tool requires the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or higher.

System Requirements

Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)

Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)

50MB of free space on your hard drive

DVD-R drive or 4GB removable USB flash drive

For Windows XP Users

The following applications must be installed prior to installing the tool:

Microsoft .NET Framework v2 must be installed. It can be downloaded here.

Microsoft Image Mastering API v2 must be installed. It can be downloaded here.

Using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Before you run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool, make sure that you have downloaded the Windows 7 ISO file to your hard drive.

To make a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file:

Click the Windows Start button, and click Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool in the All Programs list to open the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool.

In the Source File box, type the name and path of your Windows 7 ISO file, or click Browse and select the file in the Open dialog box.

Select USB to create a copy on a USB flash drive or DVD to create a copy on a DVD disk, then click Next.

If you are copying the file to a USB flash drive, select your USB device in the dropdown list and click Begin copying. If you are copying the file up to a DVD, click Begin burning.

When your Windows 7 ISO file is copied onto your chosen media, you can install Windows 7 by navigating to the root of your DVD or USB flash drive and double-clicking Setup.exe.

Frequently Asked Questions

The following are some frequently asked questions about using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool:

Where can I download .NET framework v2?

The .NET framework can be downloaded here.

Where can I download Image Mastering API v2?

The Image Mastering API can be downloaded here.

What size USB flash drive is required?

You need a USB flash drive with a minimum of 4 GB of free space.

Can I use my newly created USB drive to install Windows 7 on someone else’s computer?

No. The Windows 7 ISO file on the USB flash drive is only intended to be used to install Windows 7 on the licensed user’s own computer.

Can I backup to a CD-R?

No. The Windows 7 ISO file is too large to fit on a CD.

Can I backup to a Blu-Ray DVD disk?

Yes, as long as your DVD drive can write to a Blu-Ray DVD.

If I have other files on the USB flash drive will the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool delete them?

This tool requires the USB flash drive to be completely blank before the Windows 7 files are copied. This helps ensure that the device is bootable after the copying has completed.

Can I backup to an iPod, camera, or other device with enough free disk space?

Yes, but this is not recommended.

The device must be formatted in order for the device to be bootable.

A dedicated USB flash drive would be a better option.

Can I use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool to backup other files?

No. But there is another article which describes how to use this tool with other iso files.

Does the tool support dual-layer DVD discs for burning?

No. Currently, the tool does not support dual-layer DVD discs.

Troubleshooting

The following tips might help if you run into a problem using this tool.

The tool is requesting that I install the .NET framework and Image Mastering API before I can install the tool

For users running on Windows XP, you must install the .NET Framework v2 and the Image Mastering API v2 before installing the tool. You can download .NET framework here and you can download the Image Mastering API here.

Please note that a restart may be required after installing the .NET framework and the Image Mastering API.

When creating a bootable USB device, I am getting an error about bootsect

To make the USB device bootable, you need to run a tool named bootsect.exe.

My USB device is not in the list of available devices

If you don’t see your USB flash drive in the list of available devices, please make sure the drive is inserted in the USB port and click the refresh button beside the list of available drives.

I inserted a blank DVD in my DVD-R drive, but the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool doesn’t recognize it

If there are multiple drives on the system the tool will select the first one that is capable of burning DVDs. If you have multiple DVD-R drives, try inserting the blank DVD into another DVD-R drive. If that doesn’t help, please make sure that your disc isn’t damaged and that your DVD-R drive is operational, and contact product support.

I inserted a blank DVD in my DVD-R drive, but the tool won’t let me burn it

Make sure the disc isn’t dual-layer DVD disc. Currently, dual-layer discs are not supported within the tool.

Windows 7 interface (and desktop) is rather clean and minimalist. Of course, you can find everything you need in the famous and well-known Control Panel. However this solution won’t allow you to see and easily use all those nested settings included in the main options. Did you know that you can become a God? Well, at least on Windows 7!

One of the less known options on Windows 7 is the God Mode feature. Basically, it lets you have every setting and option right in front of you, ready to be used without having to browse among different settings before getting what you are looking for. Here is how to enable it:

1. Right click on any bank space on your desktop.
2. Click new from the menu and create a New Folder.
3. Rename the folder as follow: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
4. DO NOT use this trick on Vista 64X. It will cause your Windows to crash! (read comments below)

This simple command will create a special shortcut to the God Mode option letting you access all Windows 7 functions via a handy GUI!

EDIT: GodMode also works on Windows Vista!

UBCD4Win is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem. Our goal is to be the most complete and easy to use free computer diagnostic tool. Almost all software included in UBCD4Win are freeware utilities for Windows®. Some of the tools inlcuded are “free for personal use” copies so users need to respect these licenses.

A few of the tools included in UBCD4Win are paid for and licensed software owned by UBCD4win. On occasion we work with software companies/authors for permission to include their software in our download or have requested their software better support PE. Users can freely share copies of UBCD4Win with friends but selling UBCD4Win for a profit is not acceptable. We have worked hard for many years helping people for free with this project, others should not make money from our hard work.

UBCD4Win is based on Bart’s PE©. Bart’s PE© builds a Windows® “pre-install” environment CD, basically a simple Windows® XP booted from CD. UBCD4Win includes network support and allows you the ability to modify NTFS volumes, recover deleted files, create new NTFS volumes, scan hard drives for viruses, etc. Our download includes almost everything you need to repair your system problems. This project has been put together to be the ultimate recovery cd and not a replacement OS (Operating System). Please visit the “List of Tools” page for a complete list of what is included in the latest version of UBCD4Win.

Download UBCD 3.50

Website: UBCD4Win.com

EasyBCD is NeoSmart Technologies’ multiple award-winning answer to tweaking the new Windows Vista bootloader. With EasyBCD, almost anything is possible. Setting up and configuring Windows boot entries is simple, and there is no easier way to quickly boot right into Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD straight from the Windows Vista bootloader – on the fly, no expert knowledge needed!

EasyBCD is geared for users of all kinds. Whether you just want to add an entry to your old XP partition or want to create a duplicate for testing purposes; if you’re interested in debugging the Windows Kernel or septuple-booting your seven test operating systems, EasyBCD is the key.

EasyBCD is used and recommended by Microsoft, PC-World, PC-Magazine, Softpedia, PC-Welt, and dozens more! In the words of Harry McCracken (VP & Editor-in-Chief of PC World): “[EasyBCD] impressed the editors with its functionality and usability. These are some of the most well-crafted services available – congratulations to EasyBCD!” Don’t get left out – download it today, it’s free!!

Download: EasyBCD

What if your Windows 7 becomes corrupt and fails to boot? Most laptops and PCs today come with Windows pre-installed and the manufacturers sometimes don’t include Windows installation disc.

This is where Recovery Disk come into play. It is recommended that users create a recovery disk as soon as possible and keep it in a safe location. In case your Windows 7 fails to boot, the recovery disk can help fix the problem.

To create a recovery disk in Windows 7, go through the following steps:

Click Start Orb and go to Control Panel. Here, select Back up your computer under the System and Security option.

From the left sidebar, select Create a system repair disk. Finally select your CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW drive from the new dialog window and hit Create Disc.

It will start creating a disc instantly. Once complete, hit OK, label it, and save the disk in a safe location.

The total file size of the recovery disk is 164MB which means you can burn it to a CD instead of DVD.

In case you forgot to create a recovery disk and your Windows 7 fails to boot, you can ask your friend or co-worker to create you one. If all else fails, below you will find the ISO image I have created, you can download and burn the ISO image directly to a CD or DVD.

There are a lot of great tutorials on how to create a bootable USB drive from the Windows 7 ISO which Microsoft recently released. This is primarily a good solution for those of us with netbooks without CD drives. Unfortunately, a majority of these tutorials utilize a program called “diskpart”, which is a command line utility for managing partitions and disks. Here is an easier solution:

1. Ensure you have a USB Drive with more than 3GB capacity
2. Download and Install Daemon Tools Lite (or your favorite Virtual CD emulator)
3. Get Windows 7
4. Download and Install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
5. Download and Extract MBRWizard

Insert the USB Drive

Launch the HP USB Storage Format Tool. Select your USB drive for device. Select NTFS for File system. Check Quick Format. Click Start to format the USB drive.

Mount the Windows 7 Beta ISO with Daemon Tools (make note of drive letter it assigns)

Set the USB drive to be the active partition with MBRWizard: Open a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd) and navigate to the directory where you extracted MBRWizard. Execute the following command: mbrwiz /list.

You should see your USB Drive in the list. Make note of the disk numbers next to the drives. In the following example, the HP Mini hard drive is drive #0 and the USB Drive is drive #1.

Execute the following command to set the USB drive to active: mbrwiz /disk=1 /active=1 In my example, the /disk=1 corresponds on the drive number of the USB drive. Make sure yours matches. Answer “Y” to the confirmation

Execute another list to ensure the active status has been updated. The USB Drive is now ready to be set to be bootable.

In the same command prompt, execute the following command to set the USB drive to be bootable: e:\boot\bootsect /nt60 D: (E: is the drive letter of the Windows 7 Beta ISO and D: is the drive letter of your USB drive)

Copy the contents of the Windows 7 Beta to your USB Drive

Everything should be ready. Reboot your HP Mini 1000, and on the boot screen hit F9. Select your USB drive from the dropdown list.

If it doesn’t boot, check the following:

The USB Drive is formatted properly.

The USB Drive has all the contents of the Windows 7 Beta ISO (including hidden files)

The USB Drive partition is set to “active” (mbrwiz /list)

Via: Bwana