Elevate a command prompt and do the following
- :> diskpart
- :> list disk
- Find the disk ID of the thumb drive (Disk1, Disk2 etc.), this will be X.
- :> select X
- clean
- create partition primary
- format fs=ntfs quick
- assign
- active
- exit
Now take the Win7 install media and extract it locally, there will be a "boot" folder under wherever you extracted it, go back to your elevated command prompt and type: <pathtobootfolder>\bootsect.exe /nt60 $:
$: is the drive letter assigned to your thumbdrive during the preparation stage.
You should now have a bootable, installable, USB thumb drive.
So trying to boot off PXE on a XenServer VM seems to VERY frequently cause problems. I finally figured out how to work around the issue.
When booting from network (you probably need to bump network boot up above the "will not boot" line) hit Ctrl+B when it says to bring up the gPXE command line. Then do the following.
- dhcp net0 (or whatever adapter you want to use)
- config
- set "next-server" to the tftp server location (this is where all your boot images are) use the IP ot hostname.
- set "filename" to the path to the correct .com file. In my case I had to bypass the OSChooser and set the path to Boot/x64/wdsnbp.com
- Ctrl+X
- autoboot
- You should see it load the image and continue.
Note that you NEED to know the location where the images are stored and be able to see them so you know what file to point it to. If you can't figure it out, start pointing it to every .com you can find lol.
Also beware that on reboot these settings are NOT saved. Which is annoying. But hey, it beats flat out not being able to RIS.