Installing Windows 7 with virtual drive

Hello all, I'm in need of some help with installing Windows 7 using a virtual drive on another partition.

For starters, I'm not able to burn the image to a DVD because, well, I don't have a DVD burner. I figured I'd mount it to a virtual drive and install it to another partition that way, but it's been so long since I've used virtual drive software I'm not sure how I'd do it. Once I mount the image to a virtual drive (I will be using VirtualCloneDrive5), what do I do next? Secondly, my computer is an HP and all the recovery data (drivers) is on its own partition on the harddrive already. This means I can't access the drivers, though I can just download them off HP's site. My question is, though, will at any point during the Windows 7 installation will I be prompted to install any drivers? I don't want to be installing and then have it ask for drivers that I haven't burned to a disc yet.

As anyone reading this post can probably tell, I'm a little bit lost here. Any help would be greatly appreciated-- or any other tips that would help.

Hello Kumo...

1. First off, you could always install Windows 7 using a USB stick, since you don't have a DVD Burner.

Instructions here:

How do you make a USB drive bootable so I can load W7 on a netbook?

2. Alternatively, you could download UltraIso from here, mount the image that you have to a virtual drive e.g. E:\ and start the setup FROM WITHIN Windows ... (XP or Vista) . This will restart later and continue in native mode.

3. The HP partition is just hidden. You can unhide it and access the drivers, but who knows if those will work. Get the latest ones from the net, it's better.

Cheers

Thanks for the information, limneos. If I had a USB stick I would've just used that, but I don't have one of those either. The only other thing I still need to know is about the drivers. Like you said, I'll just download them all from the net anyway, but my question is, will I need these drivers during the Windows 7 installation or will I need them after it? That way I know whether to burn the disc before or after.

I downloaded MagicIso, a trial or free, idk but it worked. Click on the iso and extract it to a folder. Run the setup.exe and install in your partition.

Mounting to a virtual drive is much more ideal than having to burn a DVD or make a USB bootable, IMO.

I want to use Magic ISO to clean install windows 7 rc over windows 7 beta. Do I have to install magic ISO and the iso file on another partition for it to work?

Oh yeah you can upgrade to RC from beta if you extract the ISO to a folder.

Go into the SOURCES directory.
Open the file CVERSION.INI
Modify the MINCLIENT= line to match your current build number.
Save it.
Run setup.

I suppose you could repack it into an ISO, but you can just reinstall from the folder. I did this on 2 PC's with no issues. Of course Microsoft doesn't recommend an upgrade from beta to the RC build or you wouldnt have to modify the INI file, but its a pretty simple workaround.

Is it possible to install windows 7 from a virtual drive into a ready made partition so my computer is dual bootable?

If I mount the windows 7 .iso onto the virtual drive it starts the installation procedure, is there a point at which I can choose to install to a partition or do you have to go through the whole bootable dvd/usb method?

Yes and yes.

Just to clarify, if you are doing an upgrade install, you will not get any prompts to select anything about the specifics. it's going to assume that you want to replace your current booted OS with Win7 and as long as you have the disk space, its gonna upgrade you and that's that. If you do a custom install, you should be prompted to select the drive and all that.