[vox-tech] creating a bootable USB key

[Thomas Johnston]

I have a windows 7 install disk that I would like to make into a
bootable USB key so that I can install the OS on a computer without an
optical drive. I have tried a number of different tutorials/methods on
my kubuntu 10.04 laptop (64 bit), but so far nothing has worked.

The first thing I thought of was to try kubuntu's startup disk
creator, but I would get an error like:
Could not move syslinux files in "/media/8F0E-C29F": [Errno 2] No such
file or directory. Maybe "/media/U3 System" is not an Ubuntu image?

I then tried ripping the install disk as an iso file and then using
UNetbootin to make a bootable USB. I used K3B with "copy medium" to
create an iso image of the install DVD; I assume that there is nothing
fancy about this operation. I saw no error messages during the
process. However UNetbootin takes about 1 sec to go through the
process of copying everything to the USB and saying "done" (no errors
are generated). Not surprisingly, the USB key is not recognized as a
bootable medium.

I have even tried using Gparted to format the USB as fat32 with a boot
flag, then mounting the iso file and using dd to copy all of the
contents to the USB key. There were no errors in copying, but it was
never recognized as bootable (yes, the BIOS is set to first boot to
the USB). I used kubuntu's startup disk creator to put kubuntu 10.10
on this same USB key and it worked correctly, so I don't think it is
the USB key.

My question is, has anyone successfully made a bootable windows USB
key using Linux? If so, how did you do it?

Thomas