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    Asus N10 Won't Boot from Thumb drive to install OS

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by Crispy1805, Dec 6, 2008.

  1. Crispy1805

    Crispy1805 Notebook Consultant

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    Hey guys,

    So I recently got an N10, and I bought an 7200RPM hard drive to install in it (meaning its completely clean). So, I installed the HDD...thats good. Now I am trying to install Vista on it via a usb thumb drive. I used this tutorial: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/181538-usb-bootable-vista-installation-flash-thumb-drive.html

    And everything worked out fine. But my N10 says "Pen drive without Operating system" when it tries to boot. I even rearranged the hard drives in the bios. (USB drive first, then Hard Drive). I am out of ideas.
     
    Crispy1805, Dec 6, 2008
    #1
  2. yuio

    yuio NBR Assistive Tec. Tec.

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    ... are you sure a USB CD drive wouldn't be easier?
     
    yuio, Dec 6, 2008
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  3. Crispy1805

    Crispy1805 Notebook Consultant

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    It would, but I don't have one of those.
     
    Crispy1805, Dec 6, 2008
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  4. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    If the computer detects the USB pendrive and says it's not bootable, then it is indeed more likely to be a problem with the USB drive...

    Are you sure you have covered all the steps (make sure USB partition is active -- I believe that's required for USB thumbs as well? but I'm not sure right now --, make sure the bootloader is OK).
     
    E.B.E., Dec 6, 2008
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  5. goofball

    goofball Notebook Deity

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    agreed, did you make the usb drive active? Did you do diskpart under Vista?
     
    goofball, Dec 6, 2008
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  6. Crispy1805

    Crispy1805 Notebook Consultant

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    Yes, I did it from my desktop, which runs vista.
     
    Crispy1805, Dec 6, 2008
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  7. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    You could try it with qtParted. That's how I made my USB pendrives bootable and it has worked. Maybe Vista diskpart is not working so well with USB devices. I know the Windows XP partition manager does not even allow access to the partition table on a pendrive.
     
    E.B.E., Dec 6, 2008
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  8. Crispy1805

    Crispy1805 Notebook Consultant

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    I got it to work.

    I went into Vista's "secret administrator" account and redid the steps and the alternative steps.
     
    Crispy1805, Dec 7, 2008
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  9. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    Interesting solution. What do you mean by "secret administrator account"?
     
    E.B.E., Dec 7, 2008
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  10. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

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    Probably means just the admin account... diskpart runs read only otherwise and would not actually write info to the usb drive running non-privileged, so the partition wouldn't be active or have a boot sector... which is why it wouldn't boot
     
    ALLurGroceries, Dec 7, 2008
    #10