This is a follow up to an earlier post, that deserves an entry of its own.
So, after I failed to find a more "direct" way to install Vista on a machine without a DVD drive, and with options that included solutions I was trying to avoid (namely purchasing any additional hardware), I set out to investigate ways to install Vista (or any other OS for that matter) from a USB bootable flash drive.
This is a somewhat detailed account of my approach and ultimate solution.
Of course we all start at Google! Where else? I then landed at Jeff Gonzales' Blog Post, which in a very concise manner stated that he was able to do it and gave credit to this guys' blog post where the meat on how to go about creating an bootable USB drive with a Vista Image on it.
All of the information was very relevant, however not 100% ...hmm shall we say infallible, favoring the term over accurate.
Thanks to Jeff's blog post I also learned about vLite, which is an AWESOME tool that will basically allow you to manipulate and configure the install image of Vista going from a full bloated original image to lean mean install image, customized to include (or better yet exclude) the features of your liking, and also allowing to set certain behavior by default after a clean install like whether or not to start with UAC enabled/disabled... very nice.
This is of course a free tool. I however decided to donate to the author, a nominal amount nonetheless but certainly well deserved. I don't see myself using this tool more than once or twice, but since (get this) it WORKS and does so in a very elegant and easy to use manner, I went ahead and bought the guy a latte!
The caveat to the aforementioned solution as stated in the source blog posts, is that the XP version of Diskpart command does not support UBS devices and although the post clearly describes the steps to ultimately accomplish the desired goal, it fails to disclose that one needs to run the partitioning process (when using Diskpart) from a Vista installation. Luckily, I do have a Vista system and was able to successfully partition, format and make the USB flash drive bootable.
So, the skinny, the step by step?
- Have your Vista install disk or image handy, ready, available.
- You can use the image as is, or play around with vLite and make a smaller, customized image, but this of course is a totally optional step. You may be motivated to use vLite if your USB flash drive is not large enough to hold the original 2.5GB Vista image. In my case, I used a smaller 2GB USB flash drive that perfectly held the leaner 1.5GB image I created using vLite
- From a Vista system, connect your USB flash drive to an available USB port, open a Command window (cmd.exe) and execute the following steps, being EXTREMELLY CAREFUL to refer to the correct disk when issuing the partitioning commands.
- Diskpart
- list disk << view list of disks. CORRECT # from this list in the next step is CRITICAL for your system's safety
- select disk n << Replace n with the CORRECT disk #
- create partition primary
- select partition 1
- active
- format fs=fat32
- exit
You need to have the USB flash drive and the Vista image available and ready for the next step.
- If you are using an .iso image, and have it mounted on a logical disk drive, or if you are using a DVD as a source, use the appropriate drive letter as the source in the following command
- xcopy x:\*.* /s/e/f y:\
where x: is the source drive (your mounted .iso or DVD drive) and the y:\ is your USB flash drive.
Voila! Now you *should* have a bootable install image of Vista (hopefully lean, mean and custom) on a USB flash drive.
As I wrote this post, the install was taking place... it finished before I finished the post. What does that tell you? Either I am a lousy, lousy typist (which could very well be the case) or installing from a USB flash drive is wickedly fast and sprinkled with awesomeness!
Now on to making my new Vista install a usable, practical Media Center solution.
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