Many of us our eager to try out the new Windows 8 build, however, if you do not have a CD, DVD, USB or other bootable media to install Windows 8, then here is a quick tip to help you install it directly without any bootable device.
Note: This procedure is to perform a clean install of the Windows 8 operating system onto another partition of your computer.
Step 1: Just the Microsoft ISO from the link given here. Then mount the ISO image to a disk mounting tool such as Alcohol, Deamon Tools, MagicDisc, etc (as shown in the below screen shot).
Note: Do not use the autorun installer. The autorun installer only allows you to upgrade your existing Windows installation and will not allow you to install to a separate hard drive or partition.
Step 2: Now, go to the virtual install disc and the folder called “sources”.
Step 3: Run setup.exe and proceed as if installing Windows Vista or Windows 7.
Enjoy your Windows 8 with the beautiful Metro UI.
This great tip was posted on Reddit by caramelpolice. We thank him for brining us this tip!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Will it dual boot my win7 with 8, or will it remove windows 7 completely?
You can dual boot it with Windows 7 Provided you have an extended partition. You will not be able to dual boot if your C Drive is a dynamic disk.
I’m assuming that I can use this technique to install Win8 on my 500GB External Hard Drive, correct? I would then use the BIOS to change the boot order to the hard drive. Also, because of my newbie-ness, I have to ask; It IS fairly easy to get rid of Win8 after I install it on my EHD, if I want to, correct?
I doubt you will succeed in doing so as Windows has limitations regarding installation on external or fire wire devices. I cant say if the developer’s build is installable on portable drives (probably not), however, according to the Windows 8 news and rumors, the final build will provide portable drive support. This is likely to result in pre-installed Windows 8 being sold on pen drives or the like.
Very well written information. It will be supportive to anybody who usess it, including yours truly
. Keep doing what you are doing – can’r wait to read more posts.
Will try it and tell you if it works (which is makes total since to me), since no one here said if it worked or not.
I installed it and now it is there with the Metro UI. However this sucks big time and I want to remove it, since there is no uninstall feature, would removing the entire partition create problems for my main partition(C drive)?