Install Windows 7 On Ssd From Usb
RECOMMENDED:As you likely know, while one can install Windows 7 from an external hard drive, one can’t install the same to an external hard drive with default settings. For all those users waiting for a good workaround to install Vista, Windows 7 and to an external hard drive, here is the complete solution.Even though Windows recognizes and displays the USB hard drive in the installation screen, it doesn’t allow you to install Windows on the same. When you attempt to install Windows 7 on an external drive, you get “Windows cannot be installed to this disk” error. So, if you want to install Windows 7 on an external hard drive, you need to follow the steps given below. The procedure is simple, but you need to install Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) first to get some files. We would like to thank fujianabc @ boot-land forum for this workaround.Requirements:# An external hard drive formatted with NTFS# Windows 7 installation files (if you have Windows 7 ISO use Virtual Clone Drive freeware to mount it)# Windows Automated Installation Kit NOTE: Make sure that you have a minimum 15GB of free space on your external hard drive before starting the procedure.
Although we are not going to delete the contents of external hard drive, we recommend backing up your external hard drive contents before trying this guide. Install Windows 7 on a USB drive with easeStep 1. Create two folders named Windows Files and WAIK Files on your desktop or any other drive which has a minimum of 5 GB free space.Step 2: Download the ZIP file from and extract the contents to the WAIK Files folder. Before starting the actual installation procedure, you need to have three files: Bcdboot.exe, Bootsect.exe, and Imgex.exe. These files can only be obtained by installing Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 on your Windows PC.
After installing WAIK, simply search for these files in the Windows installation drive to get them. Once you have these three files, copy them to WAIK Files folder that you have created in the above step.Step 3: Copy all the contents of the Windows 7 installation DVD to the Windows Files folder.Step 4: The next step is to run the Installer.cmd file as Administrator (Right-click on installer.cmd and select run as administrator). In the first screen, you will be asked to press Enter to continue.Step 5: Press Enter key to browse to the install.wim file present in the Windows Files folder. The Install.wim file can be found under Sources folder (Windows Files/ Sources/ install.wim).Step 6: Now, you need to select the Windows 7 edition that you want to install on external hard drive.
You can select the edition by entering the index number shown on the screen. For example, type “5” (without quote) and hit Enter key to select Ultimate edition.Step 7: The next step is to enter your External drive’s drive letter. Enter the drive letter (ex: L) and press Enter key.Step 8: Now, type in the drive letter of your ACTIVE partition and hit Enter key. Generally “C” is the active partition. You can find the active partition by opening the Windows Disk Management tool (type diskmgmt.msc in Start menu search area and hit enter to launch it).Step 9: Finally, the installer will ask you the drive letter that you have entered to install Windows 7 is a USB hard drive or not. As you are installing Windows 7 to an external hard drive simply type “ Y” without quote and press Enter key.Finally, click Enter key again to start extracting the Install.wim files. This might take a few minutes.
Once done, you will be asked to reboot your PC to continue the normal Windows 7 installation procedure.Step 10: Reboot your PC and follow the usual to complete Windows 7 installation on the external hard drive. Your PC will be restarted twice or thrice during installation.Please note that the installation procedure might be slower as you are installing Windows 7 to an external hard drive.Step 11: Once done with the installation, you are good to go. You can install all drivers and other software to start using the best Windows version on your PC.Note: We have tested this method to install the x86 flavor of Windows 7 to Seagate USB external hard drive. But should work fine with x64 as well. Users who would like to carry Windows 7 on a USB flash drive can follow our guide.UPDATE: If you’re having issues with this guide, please go through our guide for easy instructions. I did not go along with this guide, as it seems to create more problems than it solves. My explanation is as follows:This method is for installing a secondary Windows to your existing configuration.
This method circumvents the original Windows installer limitation of being unable to install to external devices, BUT this guide does not specifically mention that following it will inherently made this external drive of yours a firmly needed part of your computer configuration (and that when it fails to boot or to modify your preexisting booting options, it will brick your system). As some other write, this guide is rather old and existed long before WinToUsb and other utilities existed. This method does not use booting from USB option, but makes this new Windows drive seem like an internal one.I repeat, if it fails to modify your bootmgr, it will brick your default system (present on the C drive). If it was without fault, there wouldn’t be so many bricked Windows installations (and only one person saying that this works perfectly, although those who failed may have been following the old instruction that were here before the guide was updated on ).Fabien Cofield says. @ stein says May 31, 2016 at 1:00 am“This is useless as it requires the boot sector to be at C: which already contains Windows and it cannot be booted separately from the fixed drive. Worse, now the internal HD will not boot without the ext.
Ridic.”That’s wrong! Giving the drive letter for the USB drive on which the install take place is the right procedure. The PC will be able to boot on the twice disk (with external USB unplugged to boot on internal HD)“Who needs this?
2 windows 7 installations?”If you don’t know what to do with this, why did lost time to read this article and post a bad and erroneous comment?.Foos says. How about this?
Make an image of your current internal SATA WIn 7 OS with say Macrium Reflex, then reboot with the Macrium CD and clone the image onto the external USB (which could be an SSD these days). You can use a BCD editor then to create a dual boot menu for both drives or simply instruct the BIOS to boot off the USB which mine can do. I often do boot off a memstick (pendrive) using FAT and Win 98. I wouldn’t try to install Windows 7 onto a USB drive, but why not clone over the image?.Agent Delta 9 says. I dont understand this part:“Download the ZIP file from here and extract the contents to WAIK Files folder. Before starting the actual installation procedure, you need to have three files: Bcdboot.exe, Bootsect.exe and Imgex.exe. These files can only be obtained by installing Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 on your Windows PC.
After installing WAIK, simply search for these files in the Windows installation drive to get them. Once you have these three files, copy them to WAIK Files folder that you have created in the above step.”What should I download and what should I install?.Dave says. READ the contents of the batch files, is is a VIRUS and rewrites your registry.to destroy your MASTER BOOT RECORD on your system disk! You will NOT be able to reboot your box without the Windows install CD.The only thing that works right is ImageX.exe, all other lines in the installer.bat which manipulate the registry or call up DISKPART or BSDBOOT should be deleted. You will have to go online and do those by hand.
ALL positive comments with smiley faces in them are OBVIOUSLY fake, I did not read any of this page before starting to do this.No Pastry Please! STAY CLEAR OF THIS HOAX, IT’S A PSEUDO-VIRUS!!!IT DOES NOT CREATE THE BOOTMGR FILE ON THE USB STICK, NOR THE NTLDROR HIDDEN BOOT OR NTLDR DIRECTORIES.THE INSTALLER.BAT SCRIPT SCREWS WITH THE REGISTRY, I HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT THE HELL HE PUT IN THERE!
ON TOP OF THAT, IT KEEPS DELETING MY MASTER BOOT RECORD ON MY SYSTEM DISK.IF I WASN’T CRIPPLED, I’D TRACK YOUR ASS DOWN, TIE YOU TO MY BUMPER AND DRAG YOUR SORRY BUTT DOWN THE ROAD! I KNOW DOS AND UNIX, I WAS A SYSTEMS ADMIN FOR MANY YEARS, I DO NOT KNOW WHERE ALL THESE COMMENTS CAME FROM BUT THERE ISNO WAY IN HELL A LAYMAN IS GOING TO CREATE A WORKING USB STICK WITH THIS WITHOUT IT PROPERLY EXECUTING BSDBOOT.EXE AND BOOTSECT.EXE CORRECTLY.NEXT.
IT USES SOMETHING CALLED USBBOOTWATCHERx##.EXE, THIS IS SUPPOSED TO ALIGN THE DRIVE TO BOOT IN 32 or 64 BIT BASED ON WHAT YOU SELECTED. IF YOU CREATE IT ON A 32 BIT SYSTEM, CHANCES ARE IT WILL DESTROY YOUR SYSTEM DISK MBR AND YOU WILL BE RUNNING AROUND LOOKING FOR A WINDOWS BOOT CD.NEXT. IF YOU MADE THIS ON (EX:) AN XP SYSTEM FOR A WINDOWS 7 USB STICK, MOST LIKELY THAT WILL NOT WORK EITHER. ACTUALLY, I DO NOT BELIEVE THE O.S.
THE FACT THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO THIS FROM A DOS BATCH FILE IS LUDICROUS!allow your Windows CD to “Load Files” until finished, then start creating the new system in WINDOWS.0 directory, Now PULL THE POWER on your system. Reset your boot device back to the system disk, FORCE the booting of the SECOND menu option (it changes boot.ini to 1 second, so you have to jump on it!) and regain access to your PC. Go into System Properties/Advanced/System Startup and edit boot.ini by hand. Remove all likes that contain “WINDOWS.0” in them and reset the delay time to 6.The only thing that works RIGHT is the ImageX.exe program, the rest of his batch isFAR FROM COMPLETE and needs WORK, lots of it!Do NOT use Windows AIK files because NUMBNUTS forgot to mention there are THREEversions of BSDBOOT, BOOTSECT and IMAGEX in there! God man, what a FIASCO! Why the HELL didn’t you make separate batch files for separate goals?.Dipak DD says. I noticed a problem:When I disconnect my external hard drive, I can not boot from C: internal hard drive.I need to have both drives connected to use Windows.I tried to use the script given here to enable the hard drive to be used on other computers, in order to see if it will solve boot problem, but I received a sysprep serious error.Script to use as admin is:WindowsSystem32sysprepsysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdownI tried then the solution of using a graved Windows ISO to use repair function on both Windows installation, but so far, effects are not noticeable.pavel prozorov says.
BADLY needed clarification: you have to partition your target drive first, in disk management. First delete all partitions on your empty target drive by right clicking in diskmgmt. Then create simple volume, 100 MB, NTFS, drive letter R for example (this is = system reserved aka the small sector containing boot loader for windows) and quick format. Next format the remaining large unallocated space, to K (or whatever letter other than A, B, and cant use C because the computer youre running this cmd on already has a C drive) NTFS and quick format.
Then run the installer.cmd. Then the first prompt for OS partition thats where windows files will install, in my example K drive, and select R drive as the boot drive.
If this method actually worked these are the steps you need but I think this guide is broken, or I cant find a solution for the life of me. Wintousb doesnt work, as selecting my drive in bios afterwards it still wont boot, just crashes.Jenercy says. One of my biggest frustrations with the Net is people who actually know less than they want people to think they do.
I am wanting to put Windows 7 Pro 64-bit on a stick, and i am doing some reading to see how to do it. I just wasted some valuable time reading this crap. One good soul at least warned us that using this method can damage our C drive installation of Windows as well! Flush this stuff down the sewer and give us GOOD instructions on how to create a bootable Window USB drive.Cameron says. Hi i followed the instructions and successfully installed Windows 7 on an External Hard Drive.However after Windows was installed when i tried installing other programs i kept getting File System Corrupt messages.Went through CHDSK and even then kept getting File System Corrupt, couldn’t even complete sfc completely.All told i spent more than 2 hours and my C Drive on External Drive is useless except for booting up Windows 7.Waste of my time.Now I’ll just Format it and Install Windows the normal way.Thanks for wasting my time!.admin says. The same thing that happened with everyone else who commented here; works fine up until you reboot to finish installation. I have a company HP Elitebook 8470p.
For those facing Blue screen.It means that the new hardware (for the usb hard disk loptop) were undefined so.Before going through the previous steps make the following:1- The WAIK folder and Windows Folder save them in any partition of the usb had diskThen go on with the magic steps at the end before restarting the computer1- Remove the hard disk and attach it to the original Laptop2- Start the original laptop and it will start the installation windows and begin to identify the hardware.I wish i have made something good.Raymond says. Well, thanks for the suggestions.This procedure enabled me to rescue a hard disk that was not booting. It was necessary to boot my broken PC from an external USB hard disk previously prepared from another computer. I went through all the steps but he installation doesn’t start after the reboot. When I start the installation from either the Windows Files folder or a DVD it still says that I can’t install on a USB drive.I’m using a hard drive in an external enclosure that has it’s own C drive as it’s boot drive.
As my external drive it is the F: drive. My only thought was that in step 8 it is asking for the Active partition. I chose the F: drive. My concern was that if I chose C: (the active and boot partition for my laptop) that it would compromise my laptop. Thoughts/ideas?.aahhhhhh says. THIS WAS AWESOME.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!I have a laptop that has a password protected BIOS. I wanted to format and install windows 7 from USB however with the BIOS locked i couldn’t boot from my USB without taking apart the entire laptop to get to the battery to reset it. After reading this i simply removed the HD from my laptop and used an adapter that made it USB accessible (USB 2.0 TO SATA/IDE). Followed the directions and when time came to reboot i just removed the HD and put it back into the laptop and started it up. LOW AND BEHOLD it booted right into installation and now everything works fine. THANKS AGAIN FOR THIS TUTORIAL!.Nikola says. Sry for myenglishhi, i do this with windows 8 and working, i use windows7 ultimate x64 and i install win8 32bit to seagate expansion 320gb.
Imagex.exefind in my friend pc,i think its for win vista bcdboot.exefind in win7 drive C: bootsect.exefind in win7 enterprise dvd in step 10 i restart my laptop and after rebooting its boot to win 7 i restart again and boot win8 and do install progress until chose partition and close setup, rebooting system and boot from my hdd, win8 coming and so nice:D i play pinball in win8 and its amazing. I shout down win8 and disconnect my hdd, turn o my laptop and see blue screen say need usb or disk, i put win7 disk and boot this and use system recover, automatic find problem and fix, rebooting and boot to my win7 but now my microsoft essential security say windows did not pass genune validation, and see under screen in my background this copy of windows is not genuine. This is good have OS on portable hdd but lost your win on internal hdd, its should have a boot menu to chose.tnx.Marki says. More problems. The external that windows 7 is installed on will only run if it is plugged into the same port every time. When i plug it into a different port on the same laptop, i get “registry failed to start.” what is going wrong here? It will work only in the laptop i installed it with, only in the same port i originally used.
Install Windows 7 On Ssd From Usb Cable
And apparently “loses” its OS when i try to use the external on another laptop, even when i plug it back into the same laptop. I have to reformat the drive and start from scratch every time.khaled ahmed says. I tried all the steps and always get “BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+alt+del to restart” No matter what I try.I am using WD250gb USB HDD attached to my Acer 5920G which has installed win7 on a spare internal hdd.I even downloaded WAIK from microsoft (1.7gb) and took the original files again. Win7 ISO working fine, the installer.wim reports that bootmgr menu has been created, all fine and I need to restart. I spent over 8h today on it and not a single thing worksI used win repair via the consol x to rebuild the BCD file (strangely, after the installer.wim finishes, no “x:/boot” folder is to be seen on the USB HDD partition, it is on the original internal C: hdd).Manual add of this file and folder causes error “BootBCD Status 0xc0000000f wrong boot configuration data” to appear.Any advice, please?.Tasos says.
I would like to add, I have been trying MANY methods to try and install/run windows 7 on a External USB device. This worked up until I booted like normal, and it intsalled drivers,services,Windows 7 Ultimate.Then I got the bootloader error message.However, all I did is reboot the system like normal and allowed the MAIN computer to allow so time to recognize the USB drive and it worked without a hitch. THANK YOU!!!!!!
Man I have spent along time searching and you have been a Godsend!!.ayush says. Beautiful Program.
I have been searching, searching and searching for a hack as wonderful as this. My system is quad-booting 3 types of Windows including this one I installed, using this method, on my 1TB external HD, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. Does not laggggg at all! Just takes time to boot up, that’s it!
Still installing programs as I have space (now).:DOnly ran into one problem, since I am a amateur computer specialist I came up with a fix in no time. I loaded the settings and did everything from the steps above. I rebooted and the system and “BOOTMGR IS MISSING” error prompt came up.
All I had to do since I had Windows 32-Bit already installed, I used the boot entry editing software program, “Easy BCD”, and created a new boot entry directed to the Partition on the External Drive. Booted up perfectly.Tony T says. I would really like to get this to work. I have a RAID system that is down on me, and I can’t do any rebuilds to the RAID without Windows running, well that’s the problem Windows won’t boot because my drives are in a ‘Degraded’ state. So I would like to get Windows running externally so I can try to rebuild the array instead of losing all my data. My data is still there cause I can see it when I load Windows XP in to the Recovery Console after the(F6) install.So I preformed everything in the main How-To.After my first error “Error Loading Operating System” I rebooted and it actually started to finish the install, but once it rebooted again the “Error Loading Operating System” is back with the black screen and it stops there. This is the same error I was getting when I tried to directly load my original Windows XP straight to the USB drive.
I’m stuck now. Does someone have any good advice that will help me?.frostbyte says. Hello There,Excellent tutorial. I had it working though it cost me a while. I had a recurrent blue screen as mentioned in many of the posts. I thoght the exteranl disk was properly flagged as active and bootable and it was not, i was using a diskless pc with a bootable hirens cd usb key (mini windowxp, diskpart, and diskgenius).
What it worked for me was using a linux tool, gparted, and flag the partition as bootable. I have to mention that the 3 files required from waik can be obtained from a winpe cdrom once the computer is booted. The catch is that to make a winpe you need the waik If anybody needs tehm files I might be able to upload to megaupload or similar.Regards.Slammer says.
I must be doing something wrong here. I’ve tried this with like 3 different windows discs and each one either gives me a BSOD during “windows is installing devices” or freezes at that time without a BSOD, at various different times. Tried disabling SATA controllers in BIOS, didn’t help. First, can someone clarify: which folders do we get the Bcdboot.exe, Bootsect.exe and Imagex.exe files from? There’s 2-3 of each.
Google seemed to say use amd64 for all 64 bit, and x86 for all 32 bit, but I can’t be sure. Maybe that’s my problem. I’m a very experienced computer user, so the fact that this won’t work for me is frustrating.
Any ideas?.Armi1P says. I’ve tried installing Win8 using this method and ended up with 0xc000000f error (“/windows/system32/winload.exe file is missing or corrupted”) during booting the windows.Then I’ve tried another method from reboot.pro forum: installed Win8 on virtual machine, run an usbbootfix script found on the forum and cloned the content from the disk on external hdd. While bcdedit.exe, when run from the external hdd, lists Windows 8 on the boot list, booting from the usb hdd ends up with a black screen and white blinking cursor.:/Anyone succeeded in booting Windows 8 from USB drive?.Musa says.
Vincent,Did you try setting the boot order to USB first? (assuming it’s a USB external you are using) I’m just guessing here. Also, I’m trying to install Windows 8 Developer Preview on an external also, but I get stuck at the “Preparing” Screen and the spinning circles. Seems like my external’s not doing anything either so I guess the install got stuck. What did you do exactly? I couldn’t find the bcdboot.exe or imagex.exe from the Win8 ISO so I used the one from Win7. Any info would help methanks!.Vincent says.
The instructions worked out great. In the procedure described by fujianabc not to do anything after running Install.cmd.It is assumed that after the process, Windows 7 is already nstalled on the USB disk. I reboot my computer and is impossible to start from my USB Hard Drive, simply, it is ignored.When I try to continue with the normal installation, it displays the same message thet does not let me install on a USB Hard Drive.Does this really work? What to do to start the computer with the USB hard drive?Thank you very much.Fede says. Hi,Many thanks for your guide, it’s very clear and good to follow. I am trying to use your guide to install windows 7 on a samsungG3 external usb hdd.
The problem is that when i get to the point of restarting to start the installation my laptop just restarts windows from the internal disk and gives me code 5 error when I try to boot from dvd in the bios. I am using an.iso bootable image as I don’t have the originals, could that be the isue perhaps? I hope you can inform me,many thanks,sarah.Tanner says. Sebbe: (thanks to Payton above you)janson: you’re not doing something right or you need to try againI’m also having issues with winload.exe. I tried changing the directory to sys32bootwinload.exe, which doesn’t work. I doubt copy-paste-replacing winload.exe’s will work.
I tried both drive letters for the boot partition. I’m suspicious that something else is wrong.
It may be my GRUB bootloader, but who knows.I’m kind of confused as to how we’re supposed to follow the standard installation process if it can’t install to ext hd. Also, doesn’t the AIK install to the hard drive already?.krunal says.
Hello everyone, thanks in advance.I just put a OCZ Agility 3 120gb SSD into my system. I previously had 2 Caviar Blacks in Raid 0, and plan to use them for storage after I get this SSD working as a boot/game drive. Cara kalo fc tepicik vc ga aneh tampilannya 6. After installing the SSD, I tried to do an Image restore on it and it failed,so I said f. it and decided to do a fresh install.
I unplugged my Caviar Blacks and booted from my CD-Drive with the Windows 7 Installation 64-bit in the drive. My bios recognized the OCZ and when it boots it says BOOTMNGR missing, which I imagine is normalwithout a OS on it. I started the installation of Windows 7 on my SSD and it got to 'Expanding Files.' And stopped with an error code after about 6% completion. The partition I'm installing it to says 118.9gb out of 118.9gb. The error I get says: 'Windowscannot install required files. Make sure all files required for installation are avialable and restart the installation.
Error Code: 0x80070015.' At one point, before this, I got some type of error saying EIF and MPT or something. My bios SATA is set to Raidwhich should work considering Intel supports AHCI in Raid mode. The SSD is plugged into a Sata3 6gbps controller. I've tried installing windows multiple times, deleting, formatting partitions, everything.Please if you have any idea, help. I am at such a loss right now.My system is:Asrock Fatal1ty p67 Mobo8gb Ram GSKILL SniperIntel i7-2600KAsus 580gtxCorsair 850W Professional seriesWD Caviar Black 1tb x 2 RAID 0. Hi,0x80070015 usually means 'device not ready' and is often seen when the DVD drive or disc is having issues.Is your installation media known to be good?
Try generating a USB installation media, and maybe there might be some SATA clash on your system with the new SSD connected? (unlikely but slightly possible)This article has a few hints which you should confirm are not affecting your rig:if Windows Setup can detect your SSD and the volume on it, maybe tell setup to delete the volume and let it create a fresh one.You might also try your SATA controller in AHCI mode instead of RAID mode (again it shouldn't matter but worth a try)also the Win7 HW forum might have a few hints, it's a good place to search/ask for stuff like this.HTH, good luck!Don. Hi,0x80070015 usually means 'device not ready' and is often seen when the DVD drive or disc is having issues.Is your installation media known to be good? Try generating a USB installation media, and maybe there might be some SATA clash on your system with the new SSD connected? (unlikely but slightly possible)This article has a few hints which you should confirm are not affecting your rig:if Windows Setup can detect your SSD and the volume on it, maybe tell setup to delete the volume and let it create a fresh one.You might also try your SATA controller in AHCI mode instead of RAID mode (again it shouldn't matter but worth a try)also the Win7 HW forum might have a few hints, it's a good place to search/ask for stuff like this.HTH, good luck!Don. Thanks for the quick replies,I just attempted to boot from a USB and it said 'BOOTMGR is missing.' I'm using an External HDD to do this, does that matter, or does it have to be a small gb flash drive?
And I followed the instructions per your link.I have the latest OCZ firmware too. I'm going to try an external CD drive with my Windows 7 install disc and see what happens then, but I have little hope.I did also delete the volume and tried that to no avail, as you suggested.I tried installing from a usb flash drive and it said BOOTMGR is missing, as well.Also, when I had my OS running on my Caviar Blacks I couldn't find my SSD in My Computer, but it did install the windows drivers automatically for it and recognized in BIOS.Please any more ideas/suggestions will help!I'll keep updating.Thank you.
Try to upgrade the firmware of the SSD.These tools are not for Revodrive 3 or 3 x2 drives. You use the Windows Toolbox for those drives.However, according to Ocztech website, you cannot upgrade the driver with the tool for a system partition. Therefore you need to load the SSD from another system and try to upgrade.OCZ Vertex 3, Vertex 3 Max IOPS, Agility 3, Solid 3, RevoDrive 3, RevoDrive 3 X2 and SynapsePlease remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. John,The beginning issue was that I had my SATA set to RAID. And even though Intel says AHCI mode is supported in RAID, it isn't when installing a SSD. I had to switch it to AHCI in BIOS, unplug my RAID Caviar Blacks, and THEN install windows 7 OS.
The laterproblem, with the BSOD, was due to the fact that Intel Rapid Storage Technology was somehow screwing with my setup when I had my Caviar Blacks in Raid mode. I wiped RAID 0, since it is silly now to have RAID 0 on your storage HDDs and restarted the whole processby Fresh installing windows and then opening Disk Managment and creating Volumes for my 2 Caviar blacks. Hopefully this will help someone:I was having the same problem installing Win 7 using a ASUS USB DVD drive and was getting error0x80070002.
I did a cancel and tried to do the install again, however, that did not work.I tried different media and same issue. I noticed that the DVD USB drive lights stopped flashing. Tried to find some drivers from my ASUS DVD drive - didn't look to hard but came up with nothing. I wasn't worried because I had a IDE/SATA to USBconverter.FIX: I then plugged in my IDE/SATA USB converter into the lap top using a IDE DVD drive and it worked like a charm.Issue must of been a compatibility/driver issue with my ASUS DVD USB drive.That's just my two cents.