So a few years back, my laptop died, and I was on the road. I swung into a Wal*Mart, and picked up an Acer One for under $300 USD… Nice machine, but it’s loaded up with Windows XP home.
Which is ok, for being in a panic and on the road, but wasn’t all that hot for a full time laptop. So fastforward, and I’m looking for a machine to run some low level ASP.NET stuff on, and while looking through my old machines, I’m thinking if only this Acer One could run 2003, or even XP Pro. But I don’t have a USB CD-ROM on me, and I’d like to format the drive, obliterating all the bs I had on there before. That’s when I came across this great program, Win Setup from USB.
What a lifesaver, a minute downloading 2003 from MSDN, and a spare 2GB flash drive, and I’m installing 2003 on my Acer One.
Not to mention I can load Virtual Server 2005 (not the r2 version or the service packed one, that’ll load nextstep!).
Oh well that’s my random thing for the day.
I guess you already know, but microsoft has a similar tool for 7, (which of course is not useful at all if you need to install XP).
It's here: http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool
Yeah, I've actually used that one… I think I even blogged it..?
But as you know, it wont help for 2003/XP/2000
I've got an USB pendrive with BartPE and XP pro installer on it (you just need the i386 directory). I usually install XP by copying the i386 directory to C: disk (so that in the rare case when Windows needs the install CD I don't have to go around looking for it), then run c:\i386\winnt32.exe /tempdrive:c: /syspart:c: (these two parameters are important, because otherwise the installer will try to put the Windows bootloader on the USB drive). You can install Windows 2000 and 2003 the same way.