Windows 7 Install Challenge

[chrisWC]

I am trying to install Windows 7 on an older laptop, which does meet the minimum requirements. The problem is that the laptop cannot boot from DVD. I have tried a few things thus far, like:

1. Connected an external DVD drive via USB only to find that the laptop is not able to boot from USB either.
2. Used an IDE to USB cable to connect the laptop HD to another PC and install that way. However, the W7 installation tells you that it doesn't support installing to USB drives and the install crashes.
3. Set up a FOG server on my Ubuntu server and tried to PXE boot the laptop and push the image that way, however, the FOG server would not accept W7 as a valid disk image.

I would love to run this beta through the gauntlet by testing it at home, however, this is the only spare laptop I have at the moment. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to try them.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kyle]

Hook the USB DVD drive up, and run 7 from within Windows. It should copy all files to the drive before rebooting, eliminating the need for the disk.

 

[chrisWC]

Hook the USB DVD drive up, and run 7 from within Windows. It should copy all files to the drive before rebooting, eliminating the need for the disk.

The laptop is currently running Fedora 10, since that was the last OS I was testing/playing with. I don't have any copies of Vista to install on it, just XP. The problem with running the DVD from inside windows is that W7 only supports upgrades from Vista, no?

 

[afinita]

The 32bit Windows 7 will allow installation from within XP, or at least Professional, which I used.