Hi: I want to install windows 7 on the hard disk of my machine. I have the iso image. As I lack an optical drive, I must create a bootable pendrive (USB flash memory stick) from which to install to hard disk. Looking in Google how to do this, I find that all these sites refer to some special purpose program to write the pendrive (I have at this time a running windows, windows 7, on the hard disk, but it hangs every now and then). My question is: in the case of windows 7 and later, isn't is enough to do
assuming /dev/sdb is the pendrive?

I used this, which worked for me. Didn't require another Windows install or special Ubuntu apps.

https://serverfault.com/questions/67...dia-from-linux

Microsoft technet site and maybe a few other microsoft sites had the directions to make a bootable usb installer for windows.

the command itself is ok; usually there's no need to define a block size, but syncing afterwards is important:
but i doubt that this will result in a "bootable windows usb" - which is entirely a windows problem.
not even all linux distros can be transfered to usb like this.

AFAIK the `dd` command doesn't work for Windows ISO images (it didn't when I tried it on a Windows 10 ISO image).

It only works for so-called "isohybrid" GNU/Linux ISO images.

You could try USBWriter or Rufus from Windows.
http://sourceforge.net/p/usbwriter/wiki/Documentation/
https://rufus.akeo.ie/

If you have a Linux machine with Grub2 available, you can use the method described below to install Grub to the flash drive and then copy the extracted files of the windows iso to the flash and boot and install from it. This requires manually creating the menuentry in the grub.cfg file and following directions exactly. Worked for me from a flash drive and a hard drive partition.

http://onetransistor.blogspot.ch/201...om-ubuntu.html

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...usb-drive.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../hh536221.aspx

Microsoft Windows is a special-case beast. (ahem ...) You need to use their tools to install it on a bootable drive. Even if you use grub to afford yourself a selection of Windows images to install (a very handy thing for an administrator in a large company to do ...), you still must use Microsoft's tools to prepare the image.

Microsoft is, as we all know, very sensitive to the problem of people booting rogue or unauthorized or modified versions of their operating system. (They're sensitive to it, because their star customers are ...) They do a lot of funky-stuff in the very earliest parts of their boot-process.

The guide I linked to worked for me. No MS tools needed.

The following worked:
1. With cfdisk I created a primary type 7 partition (/dev/sdb1) on the pendrive and marked it bootable.
2. mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/sdb1
3. lilo -M /dev/sdb mbr
4. Mount the Win 7 iso image and the pendrive and copy all files in the former to the latter.
5. The stick is ready to boot and install Win 7.