wibra

thank you for your extensive reply. Though I have been trying other means (without success), I will try yours now. using the stick as the source for vista, doesn't work for me, since the stick is only 1 gb.

hmm, I thought I would give pe2.1 a try, but XP sources are required for it. is there really no solution out there?

Hi everyone, As most newcomers, I have been googleing and browsing the forums, but I haven't find anything either suitable or humanly understandable for my specific situation. ------------ My tech level: pc savvy, but not particularly in the low level things you are discussing/developing here. My situation: I have a laptop with XP installed, this is my employer provided machine, I'm using it to find a solution . I'm mentioning it is corporate to imply I don't have a XP installation CD (to create bartpe for example). I have a second desktop machine 32-bit machine where I want to install Vista Ultimate on a clean (new) harddisk. This machine currently has a very slow HD with Vista home premium installed. It is however so slow, I don't really want to boot into Vista to make use of it for a possible solution track (for example, use the vista diskpart utility). Note, this machine does not have a dvd drive. I have a Vista Ultimate 32-bit image (legally acquired). I have a 1-gig USB stick. My BIOS supports booting from it (I have tried with "WinSetupFromUSB"). I have an external harddisk, NTFS formatted, with lots of data on it. I can't format this disk because I have no space to put the data elsewhere. My BIOS doesn't seem to support booting from this disk. -------------- So here is my obvious question: what is the most simple way to install vista on the desktop machine. No unattended install, no slipstreaming. update: forgot to mention the desktop machine does not have dvd drive.