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**Paul[_28_]** · November 5th 19, 12:26 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt

wrote:
Going to make a "live" record of what's happening:

1. I stuck the USB flash stick into laptop.
2. Turned it on.
3. Repeatedly pressed F12 to get to boot menu, I was kinda ****ed how fast I have to do it, so I kept pressing it over and over again.
4. Then I noticed an odd flickering of the boot menu, I already had a hunch this can't be good.
5. Then continued booting from USB Stick.
6. Funny enough Windows Setup crashed with a blue screen: "Attempting to boot from VHD failure or something"

So noticing the strange flickering I decided to try again:

1. Restart computer.
2. Press F12 just a few times.
3. Start windows in safe mode, just to see if safe mode can install windows.
4. The cyborg eye of windows 7 shows and finally it says: cannot install windows in safe mode.

So I try again:

1. Restart laptop.
2. Press F12 a few times.
3. Boot from usb stick.
4. Now cyborg eye comes on again and it's installing... currently at 68%

So strangely enough now it seems to be installing correctly, onto itself which is kinda amazing.

Uh, oh.

This does *not* sound good.

Did there happen to be enough space on the laptop
hard drive, to fit a second OS ?

Or did the installer erase Windows 7 ???

This could be bad.

Hope you do backups regularly...

If there is a C:\Windows.old, then the old OS might
be in there. If there is no such folder, then you
probably did a Clean Install and destroyed Windows 7.

Look in Disk Management and confirm what partitions
were created, to see how much trouble you're in.

I think you need to use WinToUSB to put stuff on
the USB stick. Windows itself won't do that, unless
a series of special conditions are met (Enterprise
software install, certified WindowsToGo USB stick).
And WindowsToGo was discontinued, and it might have
been discontinued in the 1903 release. So 1903
Enterprise probably doesn't even to WindowsToGo any
more.

You need the WinToUSB software to try this today.

Paul