Install Both Vista & Win 7 from one USB

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Install Both Vista & Win 7 from one USB
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Hi all

Having windowses all together is easy process except vista and win 7,
together (I mean the hard part of story is that we can have just one
of windowses vista or win 7 in our media).

Any way i have found a way to do this by USB Flash Drive.This is begining
and hope other friends will work more and this proccess will be easy too.

Notes:
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1.For this project you will need "grub4dos" and "grubinst-bin-w32" files.
I suppose that you have saved them some where in your computer.

2.In This Tutor i used windowses below:

Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100 (2.4GB)

Windows vista home lite (665M)

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1.Make 2 primery partitions in your USB Flash Drive.(In this tutor i am not
going to descibe how to partition USB Flash Drive,If you do not know ,place
notes i will tell how to do that).

2.Make first partition less than 2048M and format that in "FAT" system.

3.Format 2nd (primery) partition as "NTFS" and also make active this partition.
(Note that as i know you can make up to 4 primery partitions on your USB).

4.Plugin your partitioned usb flash drive to computer,and run "grubinst_gui.exe"
then in"Device Name" section select Disk.
Now choose your UFD (be sure that you have selected your UFD and not your
HD) and push the "Install" button, and after reading in the related Command
Prompt press enter.

5.Copy "grldr" and "menu.lst" from Grub directory to the root of the 1st partition.

6.Copy contents of Vista CD (Vista lite in this example) to partition one of your
usb flash drive.

7.Copy contents of Windows 7 DVD (Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100 in this example) to partition 2 of your usb flash drive.

8.Open "menu.lst" file (in root of your usb),delete all contents of that ,then add
lines below to it and save:

color black/cyan yellow/cyan

timeout 30

default 0





title Vista setup

find --set-root /bootmgr

chainloader (hd0,0)/bootmgr







title Windows 7 setup

unhide (hd0,1)

hide (hd0,0)

root (hd0,1)

chainloader /bootmgr

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Thates All ,now you can boot by your usb flash and can select vista or win 7 to install.

I have tested was ok,but please pay attention to notes below:

1.You can add other tools to this usb ,just you should add proper command in "menu.lst".

2.You can have more primery partitions in your usb and put other OS's as xp sp2 and sp3
on them,just you should add proper command in "menu.lst".

3.The 1st 10 minutes of setup process is a little bit slow.

4.when installing windows 7 i encounterd by error below:

"A required CD/DVD drive device is missing ......."
This is an error that many of users see when installing windows 7
any way i thought may be it needs USB driver so i gave the address of inf
file (cfadisk.inf) that i used for partitioning usb flash drive.first time it
did not accept but when i addressed that for 2nd time ,setup accepted.
So may be you will need to put your usb drivers some where in your usb
(note that when installing the usb drive is shown as drivr X:)

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have fun

shirin zaban

Hmm, NO.

You talk about two partitions and then you make (unfortunately not properly) a three card shuffle :
http://en.wikipedia....hree-card_Monte
(hd0,0) <-1
(hd0,1) <-2
(hd0,2) <-3

Each entry in the grub4dos needs to be "symmetric", and using the find --set-root /bootmgr in this particular case may create more problems it is worth.

Assuming that you are actually using TWO partitions, (and there is no real need for first one being FAT) you can make two simple "tag" files, an empty file 0 byte in size will do:

• VistaPart.tag
• Win7Part. tag

and copy them to the respective two partitions.

Then your menu entries could be something like:

title Vista setup

find --set-root /win7part.tag

hide ()

find --set-root /vistapart.tag

unhide ()

chainloader /bootmgr



title Windows 7 setup

find --set-root /vistapart.tag

hide ()

find --set-root /win7part.tag

unhide ()

chainloader /bootmgr

(relative paths and use of find --set-root)
or absolute:

title Vista setup

hide (hd0,1)

unhide (hd0,0)

root (hd0,0)

chainloader /bootmgr



title Windows 7 setup

hide (hd0,0)

unhide (hd0,1)

root (hd0,1)

chainloader /bootmgr

There are alternatives, like using UUID of the partitions, but any of the above should be working and simple enough.

Grub4dos grldr can be found allright by the grub4dos MBR even on hidden partitions .



jaclaz

Dear jaclaz

1.Thanks a lot for nice and usful informations.

2.It sounds that you do not like me,I have always said that i am basic user.
i may have some mistakes in typing forign language for example typing 2 instead
of 0 in my tutor (i fixed that),you should help and make us to learn more,not ..
Any way i like all people that know and work on computer knoledge,i like you and
others in boot land,and i have leaned a lot here.

by the way your note gave me usfull informations to work with.
thanks a lot

shirin zaban

2.It sounds that you do not like me,I have always said that i am basic user.
i may have some mistakes in typing forign language for example typing 2 instead
of 0 in my tutor (i fixed that),you should help and make us to learn more,not ..

Well, no, quite the opposite.

I do like you and your attitude towards trying to explain and simplify things for less experienced users, and appreciate the time you spend in putting together your tutorials , BUT, and exactly for this reason, I try to help you in this, and helping you means correcting you whenever something is not clear or not completely accurate in my opinion.

You are not "posting a casual report", you are posting a Tutorial, something that people with less experience will use to learn.

Writing tutorials, which as said is a very good and useful thing , brings upon you the responsability to be very accurate and "exposes" you to corrections and critiques (friendly ones, rest assured ) .

It is VITAL that the information in tutorials is clear and accurate.

If anyone follows your tutorial to the letter, as soon as he/she boots ONCE in "Windows 7", will NEVER be able to boot again "Vista", that's the reference I made to the need for "simmetry":

• If you choose the "Vista" menu.lst entry, nothing is changed in partition table.
• If you choose the "Windows 7" menu.lst entry, the "Vista" partition is hidden.
• After you have booted once in "Windows 7" you CANNOT boot anymore the "Vista" partition as it is hidden and there is no provision to unhide it.

jaclaz

How do you partition a USB Flash Drive? I tried Paragon Partition Manager, but it doesn't work.

Thanks!