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Putting the Windows 7 installation on a USB thumb drive has a few advantages—a small USB key is much more convenient for carrying around than a DVD, the OS will actually install much faster, and you can use a USB key to install Windows 7 on systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook. In fact, you can even install Windows 7 on netbooks that have fairly modest hardware. Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft recently posted a video demonstrating how easy it is to prepare your thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7. Here’s a quick look at the process:

• First, you’ll need the DiskPart utility on the system you will use to prep the thumb drive. This is a free disk partitioning utility that is likely already installed on your Windows system. If not, you can download DiskPart here.
• Launch the DiskPart utility by typing diskpart at the Start Menu.
• Then run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.
• Now run select disk 1 where the “1″ is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive.
• Run clean.
• Once the thumb drive is clean, you can run create partition primary.
• Now make the partition active by entering active
• Then you need to set up the file system as Fat32 by running format fs=fat32 quick (quick, of course, specifies that you want to perform a quick format to speed up the process).
• Entering the assign command gives the USB drive a drive letter, making it easy to access from Windows Explorer
• Then you can copy everything from the Windows 7 installation DVD onto the USB key (a simple drag and drop will do).
• Now you can insert the thumb drive into the system you want to install Windows 7 onto and boot the system. The installation will now proceed as usual—but faster.

Sources: Windows 7 News

Finally after lot of buzz about the Windows 7 beta and it’s leak on different torrent sites , Steve Ballmer the CEO of Microsoft has announced the release of Windows 7 beta in the CES 2009 on 7th January 2009.

The release has been available on TechNet and MSDN and would be available for public beta later this week this is on 9th January 2009.The ISO file name available on technet is en_windows_7_beta_checked_build_dvd_x86_x15-29063.iso

Download the Windows 7 Beta 32-bit version

Download the Windows 7 Beta 64-bit version

The technet and MSDN subscribers can download the Windows 7 beta release from the technet and MSDN sites.

Source: Windows 7 news