Vista - USB Bootable Vista Installation Flash Thumb Drive

yes it worked the 2nd time thanks very much for your help....

I require help with bios flashing can u help?

I have Acer Aspire 5051 that bios is 2yr old almost and has 50 fixes and 3 bios releases - iam running vista64 on it and would like to update the bios but am scared incase it goes wrong - is there a program I can use to re-flash from USB or CD with the earliest fw (which is still newer than one in) if the latest doesnt work?

Snadge,

I'm happy to hear that you got that issued sorted.

However, you will need to post the BIOS question in the General Discussion forum instead so that this tutorial will stay on track.

Thank you,
Shawn

Okay I went ahead and ordered a new Flash drive to try this method but am worried about something. It seems like it would be useful to do/have everything for installing Vista64 on a lil ol USB thumb drive. However my current computer is XPsp2 would I still do everything the same way as the guide says from my XP computer or is this something thats not doable?

Hi Bratboy,

It will work fine the same way doing it in XP since the files you are using are from the Vista installation DVD instead.

Hope it goes smoothly for you.

Shawn

Okay I started the process but running into a snag. I get to the step where you type active but when I hit enter I get a message:

"there is no partition selected. Please select a partition and try again"

What am I doing wrong?

I tried following the steps you gave someone else:

diskpart
select volume 9
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign (note that this changes the USB drive letter)
list volume (to see what the new USB drive letter is)
exit

but when I get to the "clean" command I get the following error mssg:
"There is no disk selected. Please select a disk and try again"

Some additional info in case it helps. After I did the quick format step of my new 8 gig removable drive if I right click on the drive it say under available space:
"Free Space 8,019,476,480 7.46 GB"

Am I doing something wrong or should I try to do a full format?

That would be about the right size bratboy. It all depends on what method the manufacturer did on calculating the size. If you enter 8019476480 bytes at this site, you will see the different GB sizes for each standard.

Can't imagine why Im having problems unless its because my computer is running XP. Is there a command to view partitions on the USB drive so I can see if its even got one? I may give up and try it from a diffrent computer. My roomy has a Vista computer so maybe I'll just try and do it from his computer next. Then will reconnect to mine to copy the drivers into a folder later

Doing the clean command should have wiped everything (ex: partitions) on the USB drive.

To check use:

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk # (for the USB drive)
• list partition (you will have a list of any partitions on the disk)
• exit

Okay following your commands in the last post
type diskpart - goes fine

typed list disk - It only lists my 3 hard drives and the flash drive doesnt show, only
Disk 0-2 (Dsk 0 and 1 are my 2 HD's and Disk 3 is my hd in a usb external case)

If I go into I go into the computer mng console it shows my new thumb drive as Disk3 so I know the system is seeing the drive at least. Its just not showing/working when I try the diskpart stuff.

Tried to type select Disk 3 and get the mssg
"the disk you specified is not valid. There is no disk selected."

When I do a diskpart command "list volume" the thumb drive shows as Volume 13
"Volume 13 P Vista FAT32 Removable 7663 MB"

Then I type "select select volume 13" and get a response of:
"Volume 13 is the selected volume" - So far so good

Then I type "active" and get response:
"there is no partition selected. Please select a partition and try again"

Trying to use the steps outlined in the other select volume 13
when I type "clean" I get that error mssg of:
"there is no disk selected. Please select a disk and try again"

I thought maybe I just needed to skip the "clean command and just do the next step but when I tried to just "create Partition" command I get the same mssg of:
""there is no partition selected. Please select a partition and try again"

Am going to try this from my room mates computer which has Vista on it instead of XP and see if I get any further