Has anyone managed to install Windows 7 (any version) from an SD card?  I recently 
bought a netbook which has an SD card reader.  It will boot off the SD card, but 
I haven't yet found the magic combination to get a Win 7 install going.

I'm pretty sure I could make it work from a USB flash device, but the biggest USB 
flash doohickey I have is only 1 GB.  The 32-bit version of Win 7 is DVD-sized, so 
it won't fit on a 1 GB drive.  I do have an 8 GB micro SDHC card + adapter to put 
it in an SD slot.

I tried using unetbootin with the Win 7 32-bit RC *.iso to make the micro SDHC card 
a bootable Win 7 install medium.  Didn't work.  While the Untebootin menu came up, 
nothing happened when it actually tried to boot.  I guess the Win 7 boot loader wasn't 
happy with something.

FWIW, I tried formatting the SDHC card as both FAT32 and NTFS, with the same results. 
 I use HP's flash formatting utility to do that.

What's the secret?  I'm sure there's a way, but I haven't found it yet.

Tip: Run a free scan for common Windows errors ad

re: Installing Win 7 from an SD card Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 10:02 am Posted by Adam Bradley (8786 messages posted) Are you sure it can run windows 7 and has win 7 drivers for everything? I would just go buy a USB DVD drive myself. On Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 8:39 am, Objekt wrote: >Has anyone managed to install Windows 7 (any version) from an SD card? I recently >bought a netbook which has an SD card reader. It will boot off the SD card, but >I haven't yet found the magic combination to get a Win 7 install going. > >I'm pretty sure I could make it work from a USB flash device, but the biggest USB >flash doohickey I have is only 1 GB. The 32-bit version of Win 7 is DVD-sized, so >it won't fit on a 1 GB drive. I do have an 8 GB micro SDHC card + adapter to put >it in an SD slot. > >I tried using unetbootin with the Win 7 32-bit RC *.iso to make the micro SDHC card >a bootable Win 7 install medium. Didn't work. While the Untebootin menu came up, >nothing happened when it actually tried to boot. I guess the Win 7 boot loader wasn't >happy with something. > >FWIW, I tried formatting the SDHC card as both FAT32 and NTFS, with the same results. > I use HP's flash formatting utility to do that. > >What's the secret? I'm sure there's a way, but I haven't found it yet. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Installing Win 7 from an SD card Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 11:03 am Posted by Steve (23810 messages posted) Just copy the contents of the install DVD to a New Folder on another computer. Copy the New Folder to your Card. Insert the Card in the Netbook Copy the New Folder from the Card to the Desktop of the Netbook Open the New Folder Click on the setup.exe File. Follow the on screen direction. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Installing Win 7 from an SD card Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 8:55 am Posted by Mozark (255 messages posted) Buy a 4Gb Flash drive instead they are ridiculously cheap these days [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Installing Win 7 from an SD card Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 11:14 am Posted by Objekt (66 messages posted) FWIW, I finally did find a way to install Win 7, or at least the RC version, from an SD card. Directions are here: http://mintywhite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=560 The key was using the DISKPART utility under Windows 7 running on another machine (obviously, not the one that I needed to install Win 7 on!). Supposedly it also works under Vista. Under Windows XP, USB flash drives or SD cards are for some reason not visible to DISKPART, so you can't follow the directions I linked to. That is why I was unsuccessful in my first couple of attempts. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Installing Win 7 from an SD card Friday, April 15, 2011 at 9:40 pm Posted by Jaycee (1 messages posted) This IS possible. I've installed windows 7 from my SD card onto my Acer aspire one but.... it was last year and all of the infomation I had on how to do it got stolen when my other laptop was stolen! But continue to do google searches on this. If and when I find the info again, or if I happen to find it by chance at home, I will post it here. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Installing Win 7 from an SD card Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 4:20 pm Posted by Objekt (66 messages posted) Holy blast from the past, Batman! I have done several Win 7 installs from an SD card (actually a micro SDHC card in an SD adapter, but who's counting) since my last post. The possible conundrum is that you have to have the Vista/7 DISKPART utility to set up the card properly, otherwise it won't work. It would be nice if there were a way to add that utility to an XP system.  Otherwise someone with a machine lacking an optical drive is kinda stuck.  Lots of netbooks were sold with Windows XP - and no optical drive - so you pretty much have to install from an SD card or USB stick if you want to upgrade them to 7.  But you also have to have a second machine with Vista/7 already on it to set up the USB stick/SD card to install 7. I'm sure there's also a way to install 7 over a network via PXE boot, but that's a little advanced for me.  I once messed with PXE to get Ubuntu on a laptop with a broken optical drive, but it was a severe pain in the butt and not at all straightforward.  Not only that, but it was achingly slow, because (being an older laptop) it had only a 100 Mbit NIC. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows 7 Discussion Forum