Is there a way to install Vista on an old PC that has no DVD drives?

[Bill Sharpe]

Win7 Beta runs fine on my over 2 year HP laptop with 1GB of Ram.
What is the native resolution of the screen on you old Dell laptop?
What happens when you try and increase the resolution?
I believe you can order a set of VISTA installation CDs from MS for a
minimal price provided you have a valid Vista retail product key.

I never investigated further. The no sound and no internet was enough to
turn me off. I already have Vista running successfully on my new Compaq
laptop with sound and internet and Aero graphics. As I mentioned, the
Dell is five years old.

I also tried installing Ubuntu on the machine. Got a completely black
screen. Gave up there, too.

Bill

 

[Safai]

If you want vista for testing, why not create a Microsoft Virtual PC (free
of charge) on your modern pc. You can download it from Microsoft. After each
test, you just close the virtual pc, and things are back to the way they
were like you have not installed anything.

good luck
Morteza

 

[Phillip Pi]

I actually do that with VMware, but I prefer a real machine to test on
as well.

If you want vista for testing, why not create a Microsoft Virtual PC (free
of charge) on your modern pc. You can download it from Microsoft. After
each
test, you just close the virtual pc, and things are back to the way they
were like you have not installed anything.

--
Phillip Pi
Senior Software Quality Assurance Analyst
Partner Engineering/Internet Service Provider/Symantec Online Services,
Consumer Business Unit
Symantec Corporation
www.symantec.com

 

[Chad Harris]

Ant--

No. You can do a full install from your Windows boot by running the setup
there. You determine whether you are going to do an upgrade by choosing
upgrade or not, and for example if you boot from your current Windows, you
get to choose the partition you are going to install the Vista or Windows 7
on, and if there is enough room, you simply install it onto that partition
running setup from your existing Windows boot.

CH

 

[Alias]

Hello.

I have an old Dell Dimension 8250 test PC that I would like to install
Vista onto. However, it has no DVD drives. I cannot even boot from
external USB drives (3.5" disk drive, external HDDs, and DVD burner
drive -- CMOS doesn't see them and found out PC doesn't support bootable
USB devices).

However, I do have enough HDD space (30 GB free on second partition) to
copy Vista DVD (or make an ISO file) onto it through network (will take
a while).

Thank you in advance.

Try this:

You'll be glad you did.

Alias

 

[Chad Harris]

Ant--

This is what you see. If you choose a custom install, the link at the top,
you get a screen listing all your partitions and you can choose to do a
clean install on any partition you like. The link above is for upgrading.
You can upgrade from build to build or you can upgrade from OS to OS
provided the path is one that is a legitimate upgrade path allowed by MSFT.

http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/winvista_install_clean_016.jpg

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/vho1101a.png

CH

 

[Adam Albright]

This reminds me of the Mohave project.

So you confess that you are one of the idiots that fell for that vista
promoting propaganda crap?

I mean how dumb can you be man?

While Senator Hinojosa's problems were not specified, many of the problems
he referred to could be easily solved if the crackers in Texas got some
help from people who know what they're doing from the MSFT campus or from
somewhere in Austin.

This falls in the broad category of what I call Vista paranoia without
actually testing and using Vista. This whole scheme of "a lot of
problems" touted predominantly by people who don't have a minimal amount
of computer skill was very unfortunate. Part of it was propelled by 3rd
party driver and hdw manufacturers dragging their feet on drivers,
predomininatly 64 bit drivers too long after Vista RTM'd in 2007.

Another force is that since there has been about half the time between
Vista's RTM and the iminent release of Windows 7, with its release of RC1
to the public a short time away given the CPU efficiency and stability of
the Beta of Windows 7, many people, governments and medium/large
enterprises included are now electing to wait for the RTM of Windows 7.

I help a number of "friends"/and aquaintances with their boxes who have
dissed Vista without really trying it, only to find that every one of
their problems were solvable in minutes and the problems were with them
not Vista or MSFT.

This reminds me of the Mohave project.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mojave-experiment/

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

I confess I Beta tested Vista and used it for production boxes back in 7/05.
Never had a significant problem with it, although they could have improved
upon it and most enterprises and Gartner are now in favor of adopting Win 7
without waiting for a Service Pack. I'm past Vista. I've used Win 7 as
Production since December--and every build gets better. I'm here to help
people with whatever flavor of Windows they have "period."

I have way too much to do to waste time in a pissing contest with the AA's
of the world. You waste a lot of time with non-specific criticisms of any
Windows OS. I'd use it playing with Linux if you don't like Windows or you
can buy a Mac and use OS X+.

CH

 

[Adam Albright]

I've used Win 7 as
Production since December--

I rest my case..... using a beta as a production OS.... Only a really dumb
person would do that..

You waste a lot of time with non-specific criticisms of any Windows OS.

I waste my time not to criticize Vista, but I'm "wasting" my time revealing
the truth to people what a pile of shit it is,
as well as the idiots who like the POS OS. Getting the truth out that vista
is shit is more important than helping the sufferers-users of that crap
quality OS.

 

[Albright's Psychiatrist]

Isn't it time to return to your psychiatric visits? You are off again and
you could be a serious threat to the vista forum. Better call and get help
right away.

 

[Albright's Psychiatrist]

Isn't it time to return to your psychiatric visits? You are off again and
you could be a serious threat to the vista forum. Better call and get help
right away.

 

[Ant]

I found a way to do this, buit it is not really a clean install. I
copied Windows Vista files to another drive (e.g., USB HDD) in Windows
XP. I ran its setup.exe.

It gave me two choices: Upgrade or custom. I didn't want to upgrade so
I picked custom but there is no clean install from scratch. It would
only rename and move my old Windows folder and files. I do not want to
do this. I was to format/erase C: drive and install Vista.

I also see this behavior in Windows 7 beta builds.