Making a Windows install from a USB pendrive

brendan · 1 Feb 2011 at 18:00

Ok, i'm not a windows user, however I need to flash the bios on my lenovo S10-3t netbook which only has linux. My plan is to take my X25-M out of the netbook and replace it with a spare 2.5" drive, install windows, flash the BIOS and bob's your uncle.

So I need windows 7 ideally (its what came on the netbook), although windows XP should do (it says XP to 7). I have licenses and ISOs for pretty much any version of windows as I have an MSDN license.

I'd like to know what the easiest way would be to make a USB stick that I can install windows from (I know you can get these live windows builds but i'm not too keen on using such a thing to flash the bios...)

Thanks,
Brendan

quish · 1 Feb 2011 at 18:24

You could try this http://wintoflash.com/home/en/

SiriusB · 1 Feb 2011 at 18:49

quish said:
You could try this http://wintoflash.com/home/en/

Bear in mind that some netbooks do not support booting from USB drives. If you can borrow a portable DVD drive, you could save a lot of time and hassle.

brendan · 1 Feb 2011 at 19:28

SiriusB said:
Bear in mind that some netbooks do not support booting from USB drives. If you can borrow a portable DVD drive, you could save a lot of time and hassle.

I'm sure this one can since I installed Meego this way.

While grabbing a portable DVD drive is my last option (I can probably do it with a SATA->USB converter I have), I'd really like to have a good way of doing this and not a hack requiring so much hardware!

@quish - that looks like the ticket, I shall give it a go when I get back to my windows machine!

If anyone knows a way that may work on Linux or that is free software (not free as in beer), I'd still like to hear it :-)

SiriusB · 1 Feb 2011 at 21:33

Wintoflash does a good job. And if you know your netbook can USB boot - then awesome. I had problems with an Acer Aspire One just before Christmas as it couldn't boot from USB. Had to go out and buy a portable DVD drive in the end!

Some motherboard vendors have software that can be booted from CD/USB for flashing their BIOSs, but you would have to see. In your case it still means a USB boot, but it avoids the need for an entire XP install!

brendan · 2 Feb 2011 at 00:18

SiriusB said:
Wintoflash does a good job. And if you know your netbook can USB boot - then awesome. I had problems with an Acer Aspire One just before Christmas as it couldn't boot from USB. Had to go out and buy a portable DVD drive in the end!

Some motherboard vendors have software that can be booted from CD/USB for flashing their BIOSs, but you would have to see. In your case it still means a USB boot, but it avoids the need for an entire XP install!

Wow, I haven't been sold a computer that couldnt boot from USB in a long time... last one was a mini itx Via C3 board... Didn't realise vendors still tried to sell such rubbish!

As for the flashing the BIOS from CD/USB unfortunately lenovo don't do that at least for this netbook model. That's how i've flashed all my other PCs from a USB stick running FreeDOS with the utility.