Yesterday on a nice evening I wanted to upgrade my HP Mini to Microsoft Windows 7.
The HP Mini doesn’t have a CD/DVD-ROM drive on board as many mini notebooks.
I had two options connect a external dvd-drive or create a bootable USB Stick.

There is not much fun in just connecting a external dvd-rom drive so I went for the option of creating a bootable Microsoft Windows 7 install stick.

Surfing the web searching on how to create an installable Windows 7 USB stick, I noted there where some different options in creating one. I tested them out and will explain them.

The 2 different versions I tested:

  1. Difficult: manual way of creating a bootable Windows 7 install USB stick
  2. Easy: Automatic way via a tool to create a bootable Windows 7 install USB stick

What you will be needing:

  • An empty USB stick minimum 4GB
  • An Microsoft Windows 7 install DVD ISO file
  • A computer to prepare the USB drive
  • A computer or virtual machine to test the USB boot stick.

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