How to Install Windows 7 Beta on an Acer Aspire One Netbook

How do you install an Operating System onto a laptop with no optical drive? The answer is you need a bootable USB drive. It took a lot of searching around the net to work out how to do this, so I thought I’d outline the steps here, mainly for my own benefit, so I know where to look the next time LOL. This guide will show you how to get Windows vista support Acer Aspire One laptop, YMMV with other laptop.

Step 1 – Let’s create a bootable USD Drive!
1. Clearly, the first thing you need is a USB drive and the one I used was an 8GB Seagate model.
2. Plug the drive into your PC.
3. Open a command prompt as administrator.
4. Get the drive number by typing:
diskpart
list disk
On my machine the USB disk was number 1.
5. Format the drive by typing:
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit
6. Mount the Windows 7 beta iso using Daemon Tools or similar.
7. Navigate to the boot directory
cd E:\boot
8. Using bootsect, we’ll make the USB drive a bootable NTFS drive, ready for a Windows 7 image (my drive was labeled G):
bootsect /nt60 G:
9. We are finished with the command prompt now, so you can close it.

Step 2 – Copy the installation files from the mounted Windows 7 iso to the USB drive.

Step 3 – Install on the Netbook
1. Plug in the USB drive and turn on the netbook
2. On start up press to select the bootable drive
3. Select the USB drive and press return
4. The netbook will boot from the USB drive and the installation will begin
5. Install as normal.
I hope this helps someone, and if not, at least I’ll know where to look the next time I need this information.