Getting there..

Well, I’ve managed to get as far as booting from a USB Flash drive into Win7 64-bit, but it’s falling over after the bootloader.

To get this far, I used method 6 from http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm (why isn’t WordPress letting me add links?) to build the Boot USB – using my existing 32-bit Win7 installation. I then copied the entire contents of the Win7-64 ISO onto this USB.

Taking tips from other sites about booting USB drives on Gigabyte boards, I then inserted the USB drive into the rear USB slots (not wire-connected ones at the front), and booted into the BIOS. Going to Advanced Settings, HDD Boot Order, I can see my 3 conventional HDDs, and the HDD Flash at the bottom. I moved it to the top.

I suspect the f12 Boot Menu has no impact if you select USB-HDD,  USB-CDROM, or any other; you actually have to go into the ‘conventional’ HDD list in the  BIOS with the USB inserted, find the USB drive, and move it to the top.

Anyway – it now boots from USB, but bluescreens with an error about a file in \windows\system32. Since I’m booting from USB, which doesn’t have such a directory, I suspect it’s either going back to my fixed HDDs and getting confused, or its building a RAM disk and falling over there. My next step will be to unplug the DVD drive in case it’s still causing problems, and then maybe move onto playing around with Win7 Boot loader sequences.

Still no joy with Win7 64-bit

OK – just tried a couple more tricks to install Win7 64-bit

First – I tried building a bootable HDD using VMWare, and then boot from that in the GA-G33M-S2H BIOS. Nonstarter. VMWare Server 2.0 can support a guest Win7 OS, using the Win Server 2008 profile, but doesn’t support Physical Discs (and there’s no point building a virtual disc, as I can’t boot from that!). There’s a hack for that for Linux, but not Windows.

VMWare Server 1.x DOES support physical discs… but doesn’t support Windows 7. It stops on booting with a bluescreen error.

I also tried attaching my optical drive as a USB – by using an IDE-USB2.0 cable which I picked up on eBay. Handy, as I don’t even have to remove the drive from the case. However, it experiences exactly the same problems as when using the drive directly connected.

PXE Boot could be possible… but is tricky to set up. It is annoying that the GA-G33M-S2H doesn’t support bootable USB sticks, as this is how I built my netbook.

OK – next attempt is to boot my laptop to Win7, and build an install onto a removable HDD, then try to boot from that on the PC. I suspect it won’t work, since the wrong drivers will be installed… but all I need to do is get to an OS, and then run the installer fresh.

Altec Lansing Backbeat 903

From my recent research, it seems these are a good choice for all-rounders that I can use for listening to music from my Laptop, PC, Media Center, and iPhone. Possible downers are poor reception when running, and high volume with the iPhone.

One annoyance I’ve had ever since SE discontinued the HBH-65, is pairing to multiple devices – ie. not having an ACTIVE connection, but being available to connect to whichever device devices to start firing music at it. I hope this is how these work, but as always, it’s pretty unclear whether this is the case.