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I've been frantically searching my room for a blank DVD-R and for days have found nothing. Because of this, I have not installed Windows 7 RC1. Is it possible to just mount it on a virtual drive (I use Alcohol 120%) and go from there? Or does it require a bootable device? If so, can I not just place it on a flash drive big enough to fit the entire ISO and then make it bootable?

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you can use a usb flash drive

Ok so check-plus for the USB Flash Drive. What about a virtual CD/DVD drive? Would it work? I don't want to upgrade and then restart to find out my Vista OS is ruined and Windows 7 still requires the CD at bootup.

Also, how do you mount it to a USB Flash drive? Is there some sort of application that automatically does that AND makes it bootable?

No, you cannot install Windows from a virtual CD/DVD drive. The installation will start correctly but be unable to access the media once the computer reboots. For a guide on how to install Windows 7 from a flash drive look here. (It was the first link on Google btw.)

Problem is I don't have a 4GB flash drive. *sigh* :turned:

I installed Win 7 to a blank partition by mounting the image in Vista with Virtual Clonedrive, and running setup, which copies the ISO's guts to whatever target partition you specify and boots the machine from there. After the copying is complete, the ISO isn't needed anymore, since all the necessary data to complete setup is already on the hard drive.

  • 2 weeks later...
No, you cannot install Windows from a virtual CD/DVD drive. The installation will start correctly but be unable to access the media once the computer reboots. For a guide on how to install Windows 7 from a flash drive look here. (It was the first link on Google btw.)

Untrue!

Windows 7 (or Vista, for that matter) will install from a virtual drive (mounted ISO), as, unlike XP, all the needed files copy to the target partition during the initial phase.

I've done Vista and 7 upgrade installs from virtual drives on several PCs.

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