Installing Ubuntu from a single USB drive is easy. This guide details the steps to get this great OS onto your UMPC with little effort.

Requirements for guide:

• Latest version of Syslinux
• Ubuntu or Variant of choice
• USB Flash drive/thumb stick with enough storage for files

Step 1

Formatting the USB flash drive

Select My Computer, right-click on the USB flash drive and select click Format.

Select FAT32 as the file system. Click start and wait for the format to complete.

Step 2

Making the USB flash drive bootable

Open the command prompt and change the directory to the extracted Syslinux/win32 folder.

cd Desktop/syslinux/win32

Once in the correct directory, enter the following to install the syslinux bootlader to the USB flash drive

Note: h: is the letter of your USB flash drive

syslinux -ma h:

Press enter.

Step 3

Extract the Ubuntu ISO

Right click on the ISO file and extract the files with WinRAR/7zip to the Ubuntu folder.

Step 4

Compiling the files.

The USB flash drive is now bootable, the Ubuntu files have been extracted.

Copy the files you extracted from the ubuntu-8.04 folder onto the empty USB drive.

Move the contents of the isolinux folder to the root of the drive. eg: from H:\isolinux\ into H:\

Rename isolinux.cfg file to syslinux.cfg

Finished!

Eject the USB flash drive, that’s it!

A sub 5 minute solution to a problem that causes a lot of headaches for many people when trying to install without a CD/DVD.

Ryan Paul from Ars Technica did some hands on testing with the latest test build and expressed his thoughts on the current state.

With further development it’s looking to be a great addition to the Ubuntu range.

Press release: Source: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/netbook-remix
Product page: http://www.canonical.com/netbooks
Screenshots: http://flickr.com/photos/njpatel/2548177767/

Requirements:

• USB_PREP8
• PeToUSB
• Bootsect.exe
• Windows XP CD with SP2
• If using Nlite remember to keep the manual installation files.
• A computer with Windows XP/Vista – x86
• Download – eeepc-ppack-winxp.zip

Note: The following steps need to be performed on any system that meet the requirements before attempting this guide.

Step 1:

Extract downloaded files, Inside of the USB_prep8 folder double click the file

usb_prep8.cmd

Then Press any key to continue

Step 2:

Click start.
When the format is complete leave all windows open and open another cmd window from Start > Run > cmd

Step 3:

In CMD go to the directory where bootsect.exe is located, example – cd c:\Pre-packed\bootsect\

Type:

bootsect.exe /nt52 G:

G: is the disk letter for the USB flash drive.

The correct boot sector will now be written to the USB stick, Now your pc can boot from the USB flash drive.

“Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.” Will display when this task is complete.

Step 4:

Close the cmd window for bootsect and petousb windows, make sure the usbprep8 window is still open.

Step 5:

Press 1 and then enter. Browse to the location XP setup files, CD/DVD Drive with disk for example.
Press 2 and enter a letter not currently assigned to a drive on your PC, this is used for temp files and will be removed once the entire process is complete, default this is T.
Press 3 and enter the drive letter of your USB flash drive
Press 4 to start the process

You will be prompted to format drive T, Press Y then enter.

When the format is complete press enter to continue, The program will now copy files to the temp drive it created. Press enter to continue when files have copied.

You will be asked to copy the files to USB drive yes/no, click yes.

When prompted if you would like to USB drive to be preferred boot drive, click yes.

Click yes to un mount the virtual drive (Temp drive eg T:).

Close the usbprep8 window.

Step 6:

Make sure the USB flash drive is the primary boot device, Put the usb flash drive into your EeePC and boot from it.

You will have two options, Select Text mode setup.

Format the HDD using NTFS

When complete you will be prompted to reboot, If the GUI setup does not start first time reboot the EeePC and press ESC to launch the boot menu, select the USB flash drive and

boot from it…when prompted with the original menu with two options select GUI setup.

Finished!

This works perfectly and is a great way to install Windows XP without a external CD/DVD Drive.

Requirements:

• USB Drive flash drive
• Computer running Windows XP / Windows Vista
• Vlite
• Windows Vista DVD

Following this guide is easy, once complete you will be able to install Windows Vista from a USB flash drive.Vlite is optional, but you will need to have sufficient HDD space for the install. Vlite is strongly recommend to create a customised installation suitable for the EeePC.

Step 1:

Make sure the USB flash drive is connected

Step 2:

Open the command prompt, Start > Run > cmd

Step 3:

Type diskpart in the cmd window, press enter. Then type:

list disk

and press enter. Confirm the disk number that your usb drive has, for this guide disk 1 is the example.

Step 4:

Now that we know our usb flash drive is disk 1 we can begin. Enter the following in the cmd window you currently have open, adjust accordingly to your configuration.


select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit

Step 5:

D: drive letter that contains the installation files (Windows vista dvd) and G: is the USB flash drive.

We will now copy the installation files to the flash drive, using the cmd once again enter the following command:

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f g:\

Finished!

Put the usb flash drive into your EeePC and boot from it, Finished!