installing windows from usb flash drive

[SingingOrange]

I got a new laptop from work, which does not have an OS, and does not have optical drive

I have windows cd, and I want to install it.

can anyone help here?

regards

[MadduckUK]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...cket,1113.html
alternatively, buy/borrow a usb cd drive.

[SingingOrange]

thanks for the help
I have 8gb usb drive, and there is internal harddisk in the laptop.

I dont prefer to install the OS on the usb drive. I wanted to install it on the laptop internal hdd

[speardane]

Thanks

Bart PE just what I needed to find

[moogle]

I did that with Vista. The thing is my method requires Vista for some reason but if you can download Suns VirtualBox and install Vista on a VM then you can try this method.

http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/c...38D!1665.entry

I put it on my 8GB flash drive but it's extremely slow to load up but once it's done it's fast! Since then I've done this method on my portable HDD which is much quicker than the flash drive method.

BTW I'm talking about turning the USB Flash or HDD into a bootable OS installer which is what I think you want. I've gotta test if this works for XP too

[SingingOrange]

so lets say I managed to copy the files to the laptop harddisk, after creating small partition for that, would I be able to install windows from the harddisk?

[moogle]

not sure about that because then you'd have to remove the partition of installation files then make the os drive the bootable partition. I'd install it from a USB drive of some sort. To create that you'd need Vista in the first place which is kind of awkward to do unless you do it inside a VM.

[SingingOrange]

its an old laptop with 1.6 centreno 1gig of ram. so visa is kinda out of the question

[moogle]

well that method I've posted wouldn't be of use then
I think you'll have to use the BartPE way.

[MadduckUK]

seriously.. get on ebay or ask around your chums. find an external cd drive. http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=867041 something like that.. £30 new and will save you a hell of a lot of hassle

[SingingOrange]

tbh I dont want to buy a drive that I will use only once in my life

[directhex]

1) make bootable MS-DOS on flash drive

2) make sure you're running smartdrive - not required, but without it everything will be 10x slower

3) run d:\i386\winnt.exe to start the installer

[directhex]

oh, that's for NT4 or 5 (i.e. not vista). dunno if vista can be installed from dos.

[moogle]

http://www.msfn.org/board/How-to-ins...B-t111406.html

Here we go.
This one uses some Linux Bootloaders. Read the GRUB4DOS method on the page/s it explains how to do it.