Reluctant to use my primary PC as a Windows 7 testing ground, I opted to nuke my brand new Samsung NC10 instead. All I’ve installed so far is Live Mesh, so I don’t need to back anything up or transition any files. What I do need is a DVD drive – or do I?

In fact it’s very simple to install an operating system without an optical drive; all you need is a USB flash drive or hard disk with enough free space on it to fit the installation files – 4GB should do it. As your netbook is most likely running XP you probably won’t be able to upgrade, so back up anything you need and follow these steps.

1. First you’ll want to download the beta from here – remember it runs out in August, and bear in mind most netbooks won’t accept the 64-bit OS so stick with 32-bit for now. Sign in with Microsoft to get your product key and make a note of it. You’ll also need to download software to mount the ISO image as a virtual drive – DaemonTools is the best known and it’s free.

2. Plug the USB drive into your existing Windows PC or laptop. Open the start menu and right-click on My Computer, then select ‘Manage’. In the resulting box choose ‘Disk Management’, to bring up that utility.

3. If you’re using a larger drive and only want to set aside a 4GB partition as your installation drive, right-click on the drive and select ‘Shrink Volume’, and shrink it by 4000MB to free up some space. (NB. this will only work with an NTFS volume, so if you already have data on a FAT32 drive you’ll need either a different drive or some more powerful partitioning software.)

4. Right-click on the free USB drive or your new dedicated volume and select ‘Format’; choose the FAT32 file system, give it an appropriate name and, once complete, right-click and select ‘Mark partition as Active’.

5. Mount the ISO image using DaemonTools, and once you have access to the files on the virtual installation drive, copy them all to your new USB volume. This is now your Windows 7 installation disk.

6. Plug the disk into your netbook and press the relevant key during boot to enter the BIOS. Alter the boot sequence so the netbook boots from your USB drive first, save changes and exit. When the netbook reboots it should look straight to your Windows 7 disk and begin the installation. If it reboots at any point you may need to unplug the drive to prevent the install sequence from beginning again.

And that should be that. One netbook with Windows 7 installed. The OS should recognise all of the components and use the appropriate drivers, if not the Vista drivers on your system recovery disk or manufacturer’s website should still work fine.