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Install OS on a New Computer without Optical Drive

Hi, is it possible to install an OS (Windows 7) WITHOUT an optical Drive (DVD) on a completely new computer that i am going to assemble myself?

Which media do i have to use (an external HDD?) ???

How do i go with doing it?

Thanks

Dave Baldwin

Why don't you temporarily hook up an optical drive to install Windows? It doesn't have to stay connected.

arnold

You can use a USB stick with the CD/DVD data setup to boot.

You would need to create a bootable USB stick with the install media.

An alternative could be to use a network PXE boot I.e. WDS. Time consuming if you only need to do this once.

Attaching an optical drive or an external if you have it is the quickest straight forward method.

bigeven2002

Like the others said, there are USB optical drives for this purpose so that you can install the OS from that media. I am actually setup similarly, my desktop does not have an optical drive. USB optical drives are usually bootable by default, but some BIOS setups need to be configured to allow it.

SOLUTION

nobus

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rindi

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martolvan

Rindi is right, that is by far the easiest way to go.
There are how ever available other very complicated methods to do this over network etc. using MS deployment kits and MS OEM easy deployment ...
The advice is go for either an USB optical drive or the 4GB USB stick

unrinoceronte

ASKER

thanks everybody, the MS deployment option from Rindi seems the more straightforward for going without an Optical drive..., also nobus links, in which at the end they also mention these method, and the steps.

Off coruse, giving the price of a Optical Drive (around $20), that could be much easier, but the scope of this question was to leanr how to do it without one.

thanks, excellent info

unrinoceronte

ASKER

By the way, if any of you has a chance, yesterday i posted a new question which has not received any answers... Is hardware related... is for the new components that i need to buy in order to build my own machine.

Hope you can give me your opinion:

Components for new Workstation