How to Install vista, no dvd drive

[linko]

I have a thinkpad X61, with no dvd drive. How can I get vista installed? I have the vista .iso, an 8gb flash drive, and 10gb external hard disk drive. (just in case those tools help in any way.)

So how can I get vista installed? I currently have linux installed, and have tried extracting all of the files from the vista .iso to my external hard drive, but of course, the hard drive does not boot. (big surprise there!)

External dvd drive/network boot is not an option.

I tried this: http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns! ... 1665.entry
but it does not work unless done from a vista computer. I only have an xp computer, and linux to work with.

Thanks very much for the help!

[Wiz]

I have never tried this with the Vista installation DVD, but i had a boot CD ISO file and used UltraISO to write the ISO file to a USB flash drive and it worked just like booting from the CD. There are some instructions to be found on their website as well to create a bootable flash drive from a ISO file. Not sure if this will work with the Vista DVD, but might be worth a try. You might need a DVD-rom to create the ISO, but i assume you have another computer that you can use.

I guess buying a cheap USB DVD-RW would save you a lot of trouble, but as you said it's not an option.

[linko]

....Sigh....

I've been working on this all day, and everything just ends up breaking.

Thank you for the reply Wiz.

I have a set of 5 iso's that I can use for vista... I just didn't want to waste 5 cd's on the project. I don't think I have much choice though.

[RonS]

I've also successfully used UltraISO for a similar problem. Check your system's BIOS to see if there's a setting that enables booting from USB.

[taylorwilsdon]

*almost* impossible.

Solutions:

Burn ISO to DVD (I'm assuming you don't have physical media piracy is wrong).

Remove hard drive, place in system with optical drive. Do the basic install onto laptop's hard drive with the in-vitro system, remove hard drive from system, put back in laptop.

OR

Get a bootable external drive. I don't know about your specific configuration, but it should be able to boot from either USB or Firewire. Find which one and you're good to go.

Installing from USB (thumb) drive is hard, nearly impossible, so explore the first two options before resorting to that.

[awolfe63]

Borrow an external DVD-RW. Put an ad on Craigslist. Offer free beer while you are installing (should cost about $12-15 - depending on how quick you are). Add $2 for the blank DVDs. Sounds like the cheapest plan I can think of.