Windows – How to install Windows to a PC without a CD but with Ubuntu on it? (No USB install possible)

installationubuntu-10.04windowswindows-xp

Is there any way to install Windows XP on a notebook PC where CD drive is really faulty and only has Ubuntu installed?

No USB option is possible here, as the motherboard does not support USB boot. The computer is Acer Aspire 1640, to make it more complicated 😀

I believe there is no way to achieve that, but there may be some tricky combination I've yet to hear about 🙂

EDIT: another option is to copy the Windows install files from an installation ISO to a small pre-formatted FAT32 partition, and then execute installation from this partition.

But how to configure GRUB so that it would be possible to somehow enter the FAT32 partition?

Best Answer

I can tell you it is possible but very difficult. Here is a rough outline of the steps you would have to take

  • Assuming you have a Windows install disk for this machine create an ISO of the install disk from another machine which has a working CD drive and save the ISO to that machine's hard drive
  • Transfer this ISO via your network connection using FTP/Windows file sharing/Samba/etc to the laptop
  • Use Gparted to resize your existing Ubuntu partitions so that you have enough free space for the contents of the iso
  • Create a fat32 partition and copy the contents of the ISO into this new partition
  • Set the partition as bootable by either installing the appropriate windows bootloader or configuring grub to boot that partition
  • Boot from that partition and go through the steps of installing the Windows OS

There are more considerations here depending on whether you are going to try and keep the Ubuntu OS you currently have, how much hard drive space your laptop has, and others but this is a rough outline that hopefully at least indicates that this is possible.

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