Every Man + Dog has blogged about this, and since I used the technique to install the Windows 7 Beta on my diskless TC1100 tablet, I’d might as well post it as well:
For those that don’t know how to make a bootable USB key, here is the recipe:
Creating a bootable USB device (via Will Craddock’s Technology Adventure in Ireland TechNet Blog):
Start\run\diskpart.exe
DISKPART> list disk
Select the USB device from the list and substitute the disk number below
when necessary
DISKPART> select disk 1
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select partition 1
DISKPART> active
DISKPART> format fs=fat32
DISKPART> assign
DISKPART> exit
xcopy X:\*.* /s/e/f Y:\
where X:\ is your mounted image or physical DVD and Y:\ is your USB device
Now all you need to do is plug the device into your target box’s USB slot and boot it. This may require hitting F12 to load the one-time boot menu and selecting the USB Key.