the title pretty much

Why wouldn't it work?

 

If you had a Vista image, you could image the disk on anything and then put the disk into the system.

On 5/4/2021 at 4:57 AM, jumper said:

Why wouldn't it work?

 

No USB to set it up.

On 5/4/2021 at 8:25 AM, Tripredacus said:

If you had a Vista image, you could image the disk on anything and then put the disk into the system.

How does one do this?

If you didn't have the system already in place, it would take a lot of work up front to be able to accomplish it.

However, there is another option that I forgot to mention. This falls into the technically possible sector rather into what is supported. What you need is:

- a second computer
- a WinPE v3 of some sort (from Vista or Win7 WAIK, do not use ADK for 8-10)
- a Vista install DVD
- a USB or CD/DVD with the USB, storage and LAN drivers (INF type, not installers)

Using the second computer, disconnect its HDDs and connect the HDD for the system you want to install the OS on. Install Vista onto it. When the install does the reboot and then boots from the HDD instead of the DVD, the OOBE screen appears. Chosing nothing, you press CTRL+SHIFT+F3. Then the computer will reboot into Audit Mode. When in Audit Mode, you use the sysprep box to check the box for generalize, the choose OOBE and Shutdown. You can choose restart but if you let the OS boot into Windows you have to start the entire process over. Basically, the only system you want to boot into Windows after using Sysprep is on the system the HDD is supposed to be for.

Either after the reboot, or after powering on from shutdown, this is the step in which you boot from the WinPE. And here you will use Driver Servicing to add the storage driver, lan and USB drivers for the target system into the offline OS on the HDD. Use diskpart to verify drive letters to make sure you are installing to the correct volume.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/dism-driver-servicing-command-line-options-s14

After each is added, then you shut down the system. Remove the HDD and put it into the system you want it to be in. If you did it correctly, when you get back to OOBE your mouse and keyboard will work.

On 5/9/2021 at 1:35 AM, iUser04 said:

How does one do this?

There is an easier option for this. If your laptop still has a CD drive, use that, but if it does not, then you are still not out of luck. Instead, you can create a bootable Mini Windows 10 to a USB. This is the successor of sorts to Hiren's Mini XP. You can extract the ISO to a folder using 7Zip by right clicking it, hovering over 7Zip and opening it. You can then manually install Vista to your laptop using DISM command from within Mini Windows 10.

Not sure if this is the same as what was mentioned above, but you could put the drive into another laptop, start the installation process from there, and the once it restarts for the first time, boot into the BIOS instead of letting setup continue, shut down the laptop via the power button, pop the drive out, and then put it in the newer laptop. Afterwards, it should start setting up the devices and finish setup. You do have an impasse in trying to copy files over if you don't have any 2.0 ports, but if you reboot into the Mini Windows 10, you can use it to copy over custom made USB 3.0 Windows Vista drivers, which you can find in this forum, or there is an ISO somewhere that has them already built-in, which means USB will already be working once setup is finished (they will not work during setup as it does not like unsigned drivers. It will warn you about the unsigned drivers later on, but you can just click "Install this driver anyway")