how can I install windows from a hard-drive?

Question

My laptop has not been working for the past few months so I decide to just format the C: partition and install a new operating system (windows 7) I could not access my desktop therefore I formatted the c: partition using diskpart Currently I am downloading an ISO version of windows 7 on my other laptop but I was wondering how can I install it from a hard-drive because my cd-rom is not working and therefore I can't just burn it on a CD and boot it from there?

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

You can use the ISO you're downloading to create a USB flash drive that will let you do just what you need.

You will need Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool for this.

The use is pretty straight forward.

If for some reason you are unable to boot from a usb drive, and you can get your hard drive hooked up on another windows PC, you should be able to use Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool to setup a small partition on the harddrive to boot windows installer.

If none of this is possible, and you're willing to experiment, you should be able to copy the contents of the FlashDrive generated by Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool to your harddrive from a linux livecd/usb and setup grub to chainload it.

The steps would be:

1. Setup a small EXT partition on your harddrive
2. Setup a 3GB ntfs partition on your hardrive
3. Mount your ntfs partition and copy the flashdrive content to it
4. Mount your EXT partition and issue grub2-install --no-floppy --root-directory=<MOUNT POINT> <DEVICE_NODE>
5. Setup a menuentry that will set the ntfs partition as root and chainload it's boot loader.
6. Make sure the ntfs partition is flagged as bootable.

The grub menuentry should end up looking something like this:

menuentry "Windows 7 (installer)" --class windows --class os {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ntfs
    set root='(hd0,msdos2)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root <PARTITION UUID>
    chainloader +1
}

PD: check out this answer for more details on each step.