Is it possible to install Windows 7 without a CD-R or USB but instead with clonedrive to mount the dvddrive? Alsoo can a SD card install windows instead of using a USB/CD? If yes to these questions could you post a link to the correct tutorial and you will hear no more from me! Also I'm running Windows Vista (home premium) 32bit, 4GB RAM, Core Duo, AMD HD 3650 Graphics and plan on Moving up to Win7 x64 Professional (which actually just finished downloading!) [Yes my computer is compatible with the upgrade ]
Lol already 44% in transferring the files to the SD lol Also I was looking at the tutorial and do I need to move the Daz 2.1 into the SD or do I need to download that after windows installs?
well, if you have an SD card, i would obviously try that. but if you didn't, it would mean no inputs for a windows disk (no USB, SD, or DVD). Assuming you already have windows installed, you have a windows ISO on your HDD, and you just want to do a reinstall its relatively easy and i never see it mentioned. Ill just give a quick rundown of this method in case it helps someone. You need to add a boot.wim that can install windows to your BCD (i believe the recovery console dos prompt isnt good enough for setup.exe). Then you need a sources directory from the windows DVD in the root of a hard drive. Thats all you need to reinstall windows, but its a little more tricky than it looks. 1. Have windows installed on C drive. Have a D drive partition somehow (another HDD or make partition) with the extracted sources directory in root. Optionally, add an autounattend in D drive root and or add an $OEM$ folder in d \ sources (you can have daz loader in here if you look into it). 2. Use EasyBCD or BCDedit.exe to add a boot.wim to the boot menu. A regular Win7 boot.wim will work fine from d drive sources boot.wim. 3. Reboot and boot the new boot.wim we added to the BCD. It should start as a normal Windows install would. Format and install to c drive if it finds the d drive installation files. Otherwise, curse me out for it not working I personally replace a Win7 boot.wim with a Winpe boot.wim in d drive sources. The one i use (ChrisR Winpe_se) has an x: ramdisk with all the needed install files in the sources directory (you need to add the liscence dir). Therefore, for the install to work, you only need in d drive sources the winpe boot.wim (added to your bcd menu), install.wim, and setup.exe. As long as you have those 3 files in sources, setup will find the directory on the root of any media (USB, HDD, DVD), it doesnt have to be d : . The setup.exe must be the same in the x: sources and d: sources (win7 x86, same as Winpe arch). Then, launch x: sources setup.exe to start the install (from a winpe desktop shortcut if you have skills). I personally make shortcuts to the setup.exe and various autounattend files in the ramdisk, wich is great as you can edit files like autounattend as its writeable. This is sort of like having a recovery partition you can access and boot to without disks. If you want to get super tricky, i also add a sources dir from win8 minus the boot.wim and install.wim into x:\sources\sources and hex edit autorun.dll to look for setu8.exe, and then copy the win8 setup.exe renamed to setu8.exe to d:\sources, and then i can install win8 from x:\sources\sources\setup.exe. Assuming you have win8 added to your install.wim, of course.