Installing Win7 on a virgin laptop from external HDD

Hi!

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how I can do the installation on a brand new laptop that has no OS in it and I have no optical drive either. I do however, have an XP installer on my external HDD that I can use, but I have no idea if it would work or if there's anything i have to do to make it work.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

Read through the first page of this link.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/428068-legal-windows-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

 

^^^ /don't know if that thread tell how, but there are threads here that explain how to use a USB jump drive (4 GIG or larger I think)

 

JOSEA: from the first page of the thread and here it is. Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

 

Transfer the Operating System

There are two ways to transfer the operating system from your current HDD to the SSD:
1. The Geeky way which comes for free and
2. The easy way that costs $19.95.

1.The Geeky way requires the following steps:

Prepare the SSD – You first have to initialize the SSD to create the MBR. You can do that with Disk Management or with this program (which you will need later anyhow).

Then you need to align the SSD and define an active partition on it. You use an elevated Command Prompt with the following commands:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)
Create partition primary align=1024
Active (assuming you want to install an OS)
Exit

If you want to verify that the alignment is correct, you use these commands:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n
List partition

You should see a result like this:

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 59 GB 1024 KB - but 64KB or any number divisible by 4 is also good. The offset has to be divisible by 4.

In Windows7, you may have the 100MB active boot partition. So, the partition you just created, is for that partition. The next step is to shrink the partition you just created to a 100MB size (make sure it is not any smaller). With Disk Management you will have trouble to do that. I recommend this program for the operation.

From the free space you gained, you create the C partition for the OS. This partition must not be active and need not be a primary (because the 100MB partition contains the boot manager).

Alternatively, you can first create the 100MB partition with these commands:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your SSD in List disk)
Create partition primary size=100 align=1024
Active
Exit

Note: The unit in the size parameter is MB

After this action you can use Disk Management to create the C partition from the remaining unallocated space. That can be a logical partition.

If there is no 100MB partition, things are easy. The partition you created with Command Prompt will receive the C partition including boot manager and all.

There may be more partitions on your factory HDD – e.g., the Recovery partition and a Tools Partition. Those you should not transfer to the SSD because of space constraints. I would back them up – e.g., with an imaging program. The Recovery Partition you can also burn to DVDs.

The OS transfer

This is done with an image. There are a variety of free imaging programs (e.g., the free editions of Macrium, Paragon, Acronis, etc.) that are suitable for the task. You can also use the Windows7 imaging, which has the advantage that it deals with the 100MB active boot partition automatically. Disadvantage is that you never know exactly what it does.

You image your partitions to an external disk (you may have to assign a drive letter to the 100MB partition so that the imaging program can identify it) and then pull the images back in to the SSD (using the bootable recovery program of the imaging program).
The recovery is partition by partition. So you have to make separate runs for the 100MB partition (if any) and the C: partition.

 

Assuming that the XP OS you have on your external drive is essentially a copy of the original disc, the following steps will let you install from a USB drive:

1) Make sure you have a USB flash drive large enough to hold the OS (for XP, 2GB should be enough)
2) Format it to NTFS
3) Use the HP USB boot drive utility to convert the USB into a boot device ( HP Drive Key Boot Utility - HP Business Support Center)
4) Copy the XP OS files from the hard drive to the USB drive
5) Set your laptops primary boot device to the USB drive (you can do this in the BIOS - press F2 or 'delete' button during laptop startup to enter the BIOS)
6) Follow the onscreen instructions!

This assumes you have another computer to perform steps 1-4.

Good luck!