Here's an interesting trick i did to my eeePC to install Win7 without writing to the C: drive. The eeePC has two primary partitions, C: and D:. You can set the computer to boot from D:, by first writing a boot sector for NT, and then copying the appropriate files, eg bootsect /nt52 d: /f Use diskpart to activate d: select vol 2 activate exit You now need a copy of ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini there to finish this off. You now boot from the second drive, but because xp sees the drives are still by signature, stills see cp1) and dp2, active) in their original order. You now are ready to install win7. The win7 install sees the active boot.ini, (on p2), and replaces that. All of the files of win7 then end on this partition, the initial boot being the active p2. When you are done with the copy of win7, simply reactivate p1 (with the original boot.ini menu), and reboot into xp. Reformat win7's partition, and do the next set of runs.