I will attempt this with the 7 USB/DVD tool & report back on my success/failure. Not being able to find an answer on the net (all canned responses saying due to corrupt dl/burn) lead to my frustration, which lead to my ignorant comment. I’ve attempted to use it to create a Win 8 Developer Preview DVD & install it (8) on workstation 8, but have gotten the dreaded “A required CD/DVD device driver is missing” error with using 4 different ISO’s DLD’d direct from MS, using 3 different burning tools (Native 7 w/ the DVD/USB tool, Nero Burn Rom 11 Trial ver & ImgBurn) at varying speeds…SHAH 1’s check out, etc… In other words the failure was not due to a corrupt ISO dl and/or DVD burn…none of which were successful, though each ISO I used installed FLAWLESSLY in Workstation 8. As it turns out, I “missed” or rather ignored your advice to use the 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. I apologize for my somewhat terse & well…ignorant remark above. I like using the USB flash/disk drives more and more. Burning ISO images to CD/DVD is becoming less popular. Thanks to VMWare Workstation I was able to use the new USB flash drive media to install Windows 7. The installation of Windows 7 will start. Make sure that right partition is selected Specify the Disk File and Finish the configuration of the virtual disk Select the USB flash drive device “PhysicalDrive1” and “ Use individual partitions“ In following screenshots you can see how I did to get it done: Start VMWare Workstation and open the properties of your VM then create new virtual harddisk and use the physical partition of the inserted USB disk. VMWare Workstation 6.5 or lower does not support to boot from USB removable disks, but there is a workaround to achieve that.

I also can use this media to install my virtual machines. Now I am going to use the USB flash disk drive to install my systems.

In my previous post I created a USB installation disk with the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool.

Windows 7 on usb