Windows 7: Burn Windows7 to a cd?

Hi, as you can see im new here.
Im trying to install Windows 7 to a relatively old laptop. It can only run cd-roms not dvd's and cant boot from USB.

So basically is it possible to install windows 7 without dismantling the laptop?

Thanks a lot

-baMBi-

There are lots of ways to do this I guess. More information on your particular situation would be helpful.

Did you already download Windows 7? If so, did you do it on the laptop, or a different system. If you did it on the laptop you should be able to mount the image file with a program like virtual clone drive. Once the image is mounted, you now have a virtual DVD drive that you can copy the installation files from. You could probably install directly from the mounted image, or a safer bet would be to copy the content of the mounted image to a seperate folder and install from that. If you have a USB drive, you could put it on that and install from that as well. This will work for an "Upgrade" type install.

For a clean install, you are going to need to be more creative. If you post more details, we can help you. There's always a way.

For what it's worth, if the laptop is real old, you might be asking for trouble. Make sure you have a plan to get the system back to XP or whatever it was running. I'm assuming XP because I believe Vista was shipped on DVD.

Are you comfortable with partitioning, etc? Do you have two systems running that are networked? Do you have a USB hard drive?

Thanks for the reply,
My laptop has nothing of value data wise on it so that's not a problem.
Its a dell inspiron 2600 1006MHZ pent3, 640mb ram, 18 gb hdd
I have a 1tb usb hdd, 8 gb usb stick, millions of cd/dvds (blank )

Would mounting it on the laptop and installing like that work? wouldn't it crash because it cant access the files when you reboot?

-baMBi-

You can install from a USB drive.

Create a bootable Windows 7 on Flash Memory

1. Format the USB flash memory drive to FAT32 file system

Run CMD.EXE and type the following command. Note: This set of commands assumes that the USB flash drive is addressed as “disk 1″. Double check that by doing a list of the disks (type “list disk”) before cleaning it).

1. diskpart
2. select disk 1
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

2. Copy Windows 7 DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

Type in command to start copying all the content from the Windows 7 DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive.

* xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

3. Setup your computer BIOS to boot from USB Drive

4. Install Windows 7 from flash memory drive

Good luck!

I don't think that the 18GB HDD will be big enough for the OS not to mention any aps that you might want to install afterward.

There is also a 1TB hdd in play.

Yer i have a 1 tb hdd usb, so that will hold any files and apps i need really.
Ill have a crack at it, but im not sure if my laptop can boot from a usb, i tried and failed a sec ago trying to install windows 7 from the usb hdd. Couldn't find H:| (1tb hdd) in cmd promt.

-baMBi-

EDIT: Cant find the USB in diskpart. Has disk 0, 1, 2 (wich are C:, D: and 1tb hdd) non of which are the F: USB stick :S

Seems your setup is not going to be able to do it as per Mr Grimm

Ive done it . In the end just put the extracted iso onto a usb and ran it whilst in xp. Went through the process and now its fully installed with 11.6gb free
Thanks guys.

-baMBi-

Hello bambi, congratulations!

Oh no; we've corrupted another one....
















Later Ted