Installing Windows on a Netbook?

[Illusio]

My wife got a Sylvania G Netbook which is running Gnome. However she would rather have windows on there. So i'm trying to figure out how to install the OS on the computer, which doesn't have a CD drive. I dont' have a USB cd either. I'm not sure if that woudl work anyway, looking in the BIOS, the only boot options are either the Hard Drive or something called: PCI BEV: Realtek Boot Agent.

Can anyone help? The manufactuerer says it's doable, they even released drivers:
http://www.digitalgadgets.com/gnotebook.php

I'm just not sure how to get the OS on there.

 

[Spike]

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=installing+windows+on+a+netbook



Seriously though I have read about people doing it via a thumb drive quite often. I plan to do that myself though I will see if I can do it via SD card first since my largest thumb drive is a 2GB and I think you need a min of a 4GB, at least for Win 7.

 

[Rottie]

USB flash drive is better and very cheap to buy...Kingston flassh usb can sell for 10 bucks than external dvd drive for 70 bucks.

 

[MadScientist]

Use WintoFlash. http://wintoflash.com/home/en/ Very easy to use. I installed Windows 7 32bit on 2 Dell mini 10Vs from a 4GB flash drive. Change the boot sequence in your bios to boot from the flash drive first.

 

[Alienwho]

I formatted my flash drive to NTFS, directly copied the windows contents onto it, then booted via the USB flash drive and installed windows 7 just fine.

 

[MadScientist]

I formatted my flash drive to NTFS, directly copied the windows contents onto it, then booted via the USB flash drive and installed windows 7 just fine.

What did you use/do to make the flash drive bootable?

 

[Alienwho]

What did you use/do to make the flash drive bootable?

Nothing. While my laptop booted up I just hit F10 to go to the boot screen, then hit USB. Went right into it no problems. I have used this same flash drive as a bootable Ubuntu drive in the past, but that really should have no bearing because I have formatted the drive a half dozen times since then.

I honestly didn't expect it to work, but after reading some of the guides out there that made booting from a flash drive seem like a pain I just thought I would give the easy way a shot first. It worked for me.

btw my drive is a kingston 8gb.

 

[MadScientist]

Nothing. While my laptop booted up I just hit F10 to go to the boot screen, then hit USB. Went right into it no problems. I have used this same flash drive as a bootable Ubuntu drive in the past, but that really should have no bearing because I have formatted the drive a half dozen times since then.

I honestly didn't expect it to work, but after reading some of the guides out there that made booting from a flash drive seem like a pain I just thought I would give the easy way a shot first. It worked for me.

btw my drive is a kingston 8gb.

I didn't think it would work either. I formatted my 4GB ADATA flash drive to FAT32, copied and pasted the files from my Win 7 32bit disk to the drive, and it booted into the install from the flash drive. I bet this only works with Win 7 though.

 

[Chiropteran]

I didn't think it would work either. I formatted my 4GB ADATA flash drive to FAT32, copied and pasted the files from my Win 7 32bit disk to the drive, and it booted into the install from the flash drive. I bet this only works with Win 7 though.

It works for windows 7, vista, and some forms of linux. Win XP won't boot from usb, at least not when using the same process.