HP Mini 1000. Check. Windows 7 Beta ISO. Check. 4 GB USB thumb drive. Check. HP Mini 1000. Check. Google. Check. Windows Vista. Uhhh… no.

That was my issue. There are a lot of great tutorials on how to create a bootable USB drive from the Windows 7 Beta ISO which Microsoft recently released. This is primarily a good solution for those of us with netbooks without CD drives. Unfortunately, a majority of these tutorials utilize a program called “diskpart”, which is a command line utility for managing partitions and disks. Coming from a UNIX background, I figured it would be easy to accomplish, but I found out the hard way, that the “diskpart” that comes shipped with Windows XP is not able to perform the necessary tasks. Namely, you won’t be able to see the USB drives in the list of drives, and you can’t set the USB drive to be active. I’ve got a lot more long winded blah blah for you, but I’ll get right to the point. Here’s how you do it if you’re stuck with Windows XP like I am. These instructions are were conducted on and are for an HP Mini 1000, I cannot guarantee this will work everywhere else (but I don’t see why it shouldn’t):

1. Ensure you have a USB Drive with more than 3GB capacity
2. Download and Install Daemon Tools Lite (or your favorite Virtual CD emulator)
3. Download the Windows 7 Beta ISO
4. Download and Install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
5. Download and Extract MBRWizard
6. Insert the USB Drive
7. Launch the HP USB Storage Format Tool. Select your USB drive for device. Select NTFS for File system. Check Quick Format. Click Start to format the USB drive.
   
8. Mount the Windows 7 Beta ISO with Daemon Tools (make note of drive letter it assigns)
9. Set the USB drive to be the active partition with MBRWizard: Open a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd) and navigate to the directory where you extracted MBRWizard. Execute the following command: mbrwiz /list.
   
10. You should see your USB Drive in the list. Make note of the disk numbers next to the drives. In the following example, the HP Mini hard drive is drive #0 and the USB Drive is drive #1.
    
11. Execute the following command to set the USB drive to active: mbrwiz /disk=1 /active=1 In my example, the /disk=1 corresponds on the drive number of the USB drive. Make sure yours matches. Answer “Y” to the confirmation
    
12. Execute another list to ensure the active status has been updated. The USB Drive is now ready to be set to be bootable.
    
13. In the same command prompt, execute the following command to set the USB drive to be bootable: e:\boot\bootsect /nt60 D: (E: is the drive letter of the Windows 7 Beta ISO and D: is the drive letter of your USB drive)
14. Copy the contents of the Windows 7 Beta to your USB Drive
15. Everything should be ready. Reboot your HP Mini 1000, and on the boot screen hit F9. Select your USB drive from the dropdown list.

If it doesn’t boot, check the following:

• The USB Drive is formatted properly.
• The USB Drive has all the contents of the Windows 7 Beta ISO (including hidden files)
• The USB Drive partition is set to “active” (mbrwiz /list)

Like I said earlier, it’s a much easier process if you already have Windows Vista, but I found there were a few kinks with Windows XP. I’m sure someone out there has found an easier process than this one, so by all means, share with the rest of the class in the comments. The fruits of ye olde labour:

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