Cannot boot from USB on Dell Vostro V13

[chapelhillbilly]

I have a Dell Vostro V13 laptop and I just bought a new internal hd for it. I installed the hard drive and have been trying to install Windows 7 on it to no avail. It doesn't have an internal CD Rom but it will not boot up from my external USB CD Rom. I went into the Bios and the options are Diskette Drive, Internal HDD, USB Storage Device, CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive, eSATA HDD, and Onboard NIC. I then created an ISO of my Windows 7 disc and put it on a USB drive. I went into the bios and selected the primary boot device as USB Storage Device. When it boots up, it just goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I'm all out of ideas at this point. Can anyone help me out here?

Thanks in advance!

 

[rclarke250]

Well, you can't just copy an .iso to a usb drive an expect your laptop to know what to do with it, the drive isn't bootable. Microsoft has created a tool to help you install windows 7 from a usb thumb drive HERE. Follow the directions, and you should be able to install with no problems.

 

[chapelhillbilly]

Thanks for the reply. So I downloaded this tool and when I locate the ISO i get this error: "Invalid ISO File: The selected file is not a valid ISO file. Please select a valid ISO file and try again."

Any more pointers here? Thanks again!

 

[rclarke250]

It does need the correct Microsoft image name for the tool to work, look Here for the correct name, and either to download the correct image, or rename yours.