Win7 Installation Challenge: no USB, DVD, OS. How?

[Lifebook]

I'm new to these forums, so first of all: greetings!

Now to the matter at hand.

I would like to install Win7 on an old rig of mine for the purpose of satisfying my curiosity wheather or not this new shiny OS can run descently on the following machine:

FSC Lifebook P1120
- 8.9" touchscreen (16:10)
- Transmeta Crusoe TM8500 @ 800 MHz (yeah...)
- 256 MB SDRAM (actually 240, since the proc is eating up 16 MB of RAM for it's cache)
- fast and big enough HDD
- 2 unbootable USB 1.0 ports
- ethernet, Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 BG
- no USB boot, no external drive boot are possible

If you are asking yourself at this point why somebody would actually want to do this and doesn't just simply buy a netbook, read no further.

As for the amount of RAM - I've found some workarounds which, in fact, make the installation possible (one of them being patching the wininstall.dll). So that shouldn't be an issue.

The installation process itself, however, is quite of a problem. So here we go.
The only OS I've got the P1120 running at the moment is my custom Windows XP Embedded image, which is in some ways limited in it's capabilities for the sake of usability, speed and RAM usage. So it can't load image files since I've disabled CD ROM support before applying the image.

As for now I have come so far as to decompressing the .ISO, patching the wininstall.dll with a hex editor in a way explained on the internet. Running the setup.exe brings up and empty error report, so I don't really know what to do with it. I have figured out that some people have experienced similar proplems during the install and didn't find a solution so far. I hope I'm wrong.

If this can be of any help: I have got several 2.5" HDDs around here and also a couple of other computers and external 2.5" HDD connectors. So I can basically swap them out, change partitions, copy files and so on...

So, by now, you should see the challenge. Can you help me? Are you interested?

Thank you for reading and thanks in advance for responding. Any help is apriciated!

Bye!

 

[torrentg]

I think that even the x86 will not install at all with only 256 MB ram installed. So where you are going to install FROM is not an issue yet, unless you up the memory.

And welcome!

Edit: lol I'm guilty of responding immediately when I read 256, but now I see you have some kind of hacked install.

 

[jimbo45]

Simple
You CAN'T. You need AFAIK at least 512mb RAM - better 1GB.

However with a "Vlited" version you *might* be able to install with less RAM.

http://www.vlite.net/

However imagine you had sufficient RAM -- what you do to install W7 in this case is the following

1) download the ISO.
2) Vlite the system to exclude everything but the "barebones" - You are on your own on what can be left out as I've no idea. Create the ISO of this "Vlited" system.
3) Mount it as a Virtual DVD / CD with a program like UltraISO -- you don't need to have ANY physical DVD drives at all for this to work
4)) run setup.exe and install

Windows copies ALL the files it needs to local HDD before installing so mounting an ISO to a virtual DVD is fine as after Windows has copied the installation files to a temporary folder it doesn't need the DVD again to complete the installation.


To re-iterate.
Using Vlite you can build a minimal W7 install in the same way as other "minimal" windows installs -- I don't know what you can leave out of course but assuming you have found out then it should be SIMPLE to make an ISO of the limited W7 system and proceed as I've outlined.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[antalgebra]

minimum specs from M$ do say 1GB, although that minimum will be pushed down to 256MB before release.

I do suggest waiting a bit on your install for the lite version of Win7 to be available.

 

[Lifebook]

Well, sadly, I have to admit that this was possibly the wrong place to seek for an answer after all.
Obviously, none of you has even read my post so far. This I would have normaly not expected from a "skilled", a "pro" and even a "guru" level user. Pretty disappointing, I tell you.

@antalgebra

It's not that I'm dying to have Win7 on this old rig. It's just that I want to solve the problem of installing and than tweaking it. If you would have read my initial post, you would know that.

@Jimbo45

First:
Simple. You CAN. Try googling Win 7 + 256 mb ram. If you would have read my post...
Second:
You don't really think that I come here and produce a book of a post, just to ask you how to use an .ISO file, do you? Again, if you would have read my post, you would probably have realized what OS I'm using right now and that it can't load ISOs. Now please don't try to explain how to generally install software on a Windows computer... right...

Wait, maybe I should just copy and paste my first post... It would be much easier than explaining everything a second time.

I thought I would find people who are eager to solve problems instead of being eager to push their post count.

So I guess, no help here... Sadly

 

[antalgebra]

Wow, thats a pretty bold statement their Lifey. Your basically saying that with your 'google' skills, you more skilled with WinDeployment than anyone posting.

So would over 140,000 win7 Installs make me my words a little more respectable? I Read your post, and dont have much to say quite frankly. Your setup would be like pushing a golf ball through a garden hose. an 86 would be starved, and a 64 bit would archaic; not to mention, there'd not be any available ready support. This is also on the assumption that your client sku is able to install, pickup, and maintain the server drivers. There are so many things here that are going against the grain, troubleshooting will require alot of 'bandwidth' for anyone with half a brain would want to dive into. We expect that the original poster do his own googling footwork, post results, and turn to threads for specific hurdles that you might come across. Not to have us spend an hour to identify and walk you through every road-block you could run into, and lay down 3 pages just for you.

You have good chances of running across people that are doing the same thing you are... had you waited more than... say... a Day, before black-balling the entire forum, and commenting that nobody here is deserving of their title as 'expert' and so forth.

I read your post, and thought not to get involved with your pet project, so good luck; maybe someone else has the time and energy to do so.

 

[rattelmike]

Lifebook you've got an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 BG are you not able to boot from that device and then run the dvd image that's shared from another device?

 

[akash3656]

Well, 1 thing is 4 sure, DON'T mod any windows installation files in 7 unless u wanna use other versions/upgrade from beta to RC......

2nd thing: Windows 7 doesn't need to be modded to run on comps less than 512 MB RAM..
in vista, i heard u gotta do it....

3rd thing: 7 BOOTS up but darn sluggish with only 100 MB RAM.. ANY less than that will BSOD... so try a not-modified windows installation dvd/image of 7.

4th thing: Its ok to ectract the image and run from XP. I've installed Vista like that... Also installed 7 like that... AGAIN: that isn't the source of problem..

CONCLUSION: NOW Delete the modded windows installation extracted data, then try to install straight from there....

If you can't then maybe Windows 7 setup has issues with Windows XP embeded... Try to boot from DVD then..

PS: MS's minimum are for once a bit high so then computers that meet the requirements of 7 run 7 fine unlike Vista's min requirement (especially the 512 MB RAM).. which makes the OS SUPA LAG till u wanna ditch VISTA FOR GOOD!

 

[nikhil2020in]

Hi Guys,

I was also looking for the option of installing Windows 7 without DVD/USB. I had visited many forum but could not get much help.
My requirement was to install Windows 7 but my DVD drive was not working nor the USB. However i had Vista Home Premium (32 bit) with 2 partitions.
C: -> Windows Vista
D: -> Blank
I wanted to install the Windows 7 on "D" drive but was not able to.

However after some efforts i was able to find out the solution for Installing Windows 7 without DVD/USB.
Pre-requisite :
Windows Vista ( as i have tried only on this.. may work on other OS also)
Partitioned Hard Disk with minimum 2 drives

The steps are simple and very easy :
1) Login to your Windows Vista
2) Download the ISO image of Windows 7
3) Download the software Undisker
4) Extract the Image to the Harddisk using Undisker where Vista is installed
not in the drive where u want to install Windows7
5) After extracting, double click on Setup.exe which will start installation.
6) While installation it will ask for Upgrade or Custom Install (ie. New install)
Click custom install and then continue. It will show the list of partitions.
Select the appropriate partition and continue.

It took approx 30 min to install Windows 7 with 1 GB RAM and 1.66 GHz processor.

I am able to install the Windows 7 successully using the above steps and its working like a charm.
Hope this will be useful for some people.

Regards,
Nikhil.

 

[akash3656]

Btw, you don't need Vista... Even XP PRO/Home should be able to do so..... Coz i tried installing Vista from XP like 'nikhil2020in' suggested....

 

[ilesal]

My first install of Win7 was achieved by creating a new partition, downloading ISO, moving the ISO to the new partition, using winrar to open the ISO and installing it from the setup.exe. Result was dual boot. This can be done using any OS and does not require USB or DVD, CD drive.