I think it's time again to remind of a great site for computer noobs and nerds - Gizmo's good old TechsupportAlert.
We used to link to that site quite often, the site is still going strong and is growing and growing.
As a titbit the Finds of the Week with the official Win8 user guide and more.
graylox
30-05-2013
mikiem2
Moderator
Thanks graylox
Checking out the win8 bootable media article they don't mention & I can't recall if the win8 downloader automatically sets your USB stick to fat 32 or not -- I think you need it to be fat32 if you install to a GPT hard drive. The win8 downloader's kind of a pain, storing a copy of the download in the win7 User folders, then giving you the option on what you want to do with it, but you only get to choose once, so if you create an ISO to burn to DVD you have to re-download to make a USB stick. :(
Purely FWIW, for win7 & 8 I created a new VirtualBox VM with the virtual hard drive in the Microsoft .vhd format. Then I ran the Windows setup file in that new VM, aborting the install the 1st time it asks to reboot. Closing V/Box I mount that .vhd as a new drive in win7, back it up like I would a regular hard drive [using Paragon's Backup & Recovery], then dismount the drive & clean up my mess -- I can proceed with the install in the VM if I want/need the VM, or just delete it if I don't.
Now to set up win7/8 I just have to restore that backup to a drive/partition on or for the target PC, & boot it -- win7 or 8 proceeds just like if I ran the setup file, taking up where it left off, finding hardware & installing the necessary drivers to run. It's not a whole lot faster but if you install to more than one PC/laptop or install more than once the time saved adds up. Moving the raw data from the Paragon backup to the target drive is faster than running the setup normally, especially if you connect the target drive to your PC using SATA, eSATA, USB 3.0, going from one hard drive to another rather than using a DVD or a USB stick.
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