Yesterday, I received an email from a fellow scholar that a colleague of
his wanted him to reformat and install a fresh Windows 7 Operating System on
her Samsung Netbook and ask if I could help.
I immediately replied with a yes since it would be another great
learning experience. Installing an OS on a machine without an Optical drive is
quite challenging.
So, after some exchanges of email during the break, I started scouting the
web for the easiest and simplest solution on how to get a netbook boot on an external
USB/HDD drive to install a new OS, since it’s what I think is the best option.
First I found Syslinux, a small but powerful suite of bootloaders to start
computers with the Linux kernel. I search for syslinux first because I have
already tried using this when I was booting ESXi from a USB stick on our new
server machine and it was easy. After some reading, I decided to look another
one since booting from a USB stick would require at least 4GB of size when
using Windows 7 and I can’t afford to have a 4GB USB stick. Next I found
tftpd32, a utility that lets you load your installation files from a shared
network media. This utility works same with Windows Deployment Services or its
predecessor, the RIS, so it’s very easy to configure. After reading the
instructions and downloaded the necessary files, I decided that this method
should work best but still would need another alternative as a failover in
case this one wouldn’t do its task. So I continued reading again until I came
to a place on the web where after reading it, decided that this should be my failover solution.
After all the readings, I went home packed with what I think are the
necessary tools to do the installation. First I tried the tftpd32 but failed
to work at a certain stage during the boot process. To describe with you the
setup, here’s a quick list:
Host Machine:
Brand/Model: Acer 5500
OS: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
Client/Target Machine:
Brand Model: Samsung NP-N150P
OS: (Currently runs) Windows 7 Starter
Both PCs are connected through a cross-over LAN connection.
The target machine managed to acquire IP from the DHCP on the Host machine
and boot into it through PXE but after all the transfer of files necessary for
booting, the target machine just restarts and would then boot again into the
internal HD. I keep repeating the process and booted successfully once, but once
the files are completely copied, the LAN connection icon on the Host Machine
suddenly marks a red X which means they are not connected. The target machine
gets to the Windows PE but it’s useless since the network is unavailable and
the shared installation media can’t be loaded.
At around 10:00 in the evening, I decided to do plan B, aka the failover
solution.
Here’s the step by step solution for plan b:
Prerequisites:
Your target machine should have a BIOS which can boot from an external USB
storage. If it can’t, there are a lot of utilities on the internet which you
can use to force your BIOS to boot from external USB storage. Some of this utilities are
PLoP and UNetBootin.
- Format
any partition on an external
- Go to
computer management by clicking start, click run and type “compmgmt.msc”
(without quotes) then hit enter. The Computer Management windows should
appear.
Note: This step may vary depending on the type of OS
you have.
- After
that click Disk Management and look for the partition which you have
formatted in Step 1. If you’re confused which one is the one you
formatted, just go to My Computer and explore which Drive is empty, then
take note of its drive letter and it should match the drive letter on the
Disk Management.
- Right click on the partition that you
have formatted and select “Mark Partition as active”
- After
that, just load the installation disc on your optical drive and copy all
the contents in it to the partition that you have marked active. If the
installation source is from an iso, you can just directly extract it using
WinRar or 7zip.
- After
the extraction/copy is done, plug the external
P.S.
Sorry, I can't post screenshot images right now since my pc runs on a Japanese language.
I 'm afraid you might freak out when I post images in Japanese language and spam the comment box. :)
