Install Windows XP/7 without a CD drive when the BIOS does not support booting from USB devices

Posted by David Pearce on Super User See other posts from Super User or by David Pearce
Published on 2009-07-17T06:36:14Z Indexed on 2012/06/04 16:47 UTC
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Windows

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repair

I have a computer that has a dead CD drive in it and it seriously needs a new installation of Windows (XP is on it now, but Windows 7 does not sound that bad). At first I tried making a bootable USB drive, but it does not look like the BIOS supports booting directly from a USB drive.

Is there some sort of boot loader that I can put onto the hard drive first and boot from the USB drive using that? If not, how else can I re-install Windows on the computer?

Edit: The only bootable device the computer has it the network with PXE (although I have no idea how to do that) and it's three internal hard drives

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