Big Problem Need Urgent solution And easy

[n1ghtwalk3r]

I have a acer aspire 5315 series the cd rom broke and my os crushed and now i can t install and new copy of windwos vista i have a usb which is 4 gb i have converted the files on the dvd with the vista files into a power iso image
and put it in to the flashdisk i have put the flash disk as first piroity on the bios on the laptop but it still wont boot the installtion for vista ???

[boxxertrumps]

You poor dear... Your period key is missing!

In all seriousness though, a poweriso file on a flash drive wont work well.
You need to copy the image onto the flash drive, in the same manner you would burn the image to a CD/DVD.

[aaron.martinas]

the bios doesnt know what an ISO file is. as mentioned by boxx, you would have to copy the image onto the flash drive like you would for a CD/DVD. after you've done that, instead of seeing an ISO, there would be actual files on the flash drive.

BUT THATS NOT IT... there would have to be boot information written to specific sectors as well. i have never tried it, but i don't expect you can format a thumb drive (or whatever usb device youre using) to conform to the standard which allows a CD/DVD to be considered bootable.

your best bet is to call the company and find out if there is a "warranty" on the disc, or figure out how much replacement software costs.

[WebJoel]

Are you talking about making a JUMP-drive a boot-drive? That can be done. I seem to recall reading an article on a Linux distro that have an entire OS on JUMP-drive, -you run it on a computer that has NO hard-disk drive whatsoever.

Here is an article I searched for that seems to instruct how-to do this for XP..

The only thing that is keeping me from doing this is that my largest ZIP-drive is only 2-GB. I'd want twice (or several times more) that size before I even attempt this on a drive so tiny using XP and the software I'd expect to also have resident..

[rakess]

Well you could (this is a pain) take out your hard drive, put it into another computer, install windows from there, and put the hardrive back into your old computer (dont activate your product directly as it binds with the hardware)

or you could buy an external cd drive

[drhowarddrfine]

But What Will He Ever Do About The Period Key??!!!

[WebJoel]

But What Will He Ever Do About The Period Key??!!! -He just won't get to use the computer for five days every month I guess...:cool: