Reinstalling Vista & Daemon tools Problems

I recently got a second hand computor that i wish to reinstall windows vista on. The DVD drive of this PC is currently not working, so reinstalling wndows from a DVD/CD is out of the question. The PC doesnt have an internet connection either. There is a "recover" drive/partition on the HDD but i can find no way to acess it (i have posted a previous topic about this).

I am currently trying to reinstall vista from an iso file using Daemon tools, i have tried to load the iso file on my laptop (the comptor im using to write this) and it loaded fine. However wen i install daemon tools on the Pc and mount the image nothin happens. To begin with i was gettin a runtime error (error in comand line i believe it said), it was at this point i tried it on my laptop to find that once it installed it updated itself. To see if the update was what was stopping it working i copied the program files from my laptop to the same location on the Pc (replacing the orginal files), the mounted iso file still wont run but i no longer get a runtime error message.

I havnt got a clue what im doing wrong or how to solve the problem. Any advice or help would be appreicated.

thanks

P.s. Comp Spec: 2.8ghz intel pentium D, 250GB HDD, 1 GB RAM

Haven't used Daemon tools, so can't help you there, but if you have a suitable USB key, you could install from that. http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/181538-usb-bootable-vista-installation-flash-thumb-drive.html

Gary

Hey gary,

thanks for the advice, that is a great idea except my USB Key is only 1 GB. would it work with an external hard drive? and would the hard drive need to be empty for it to work or would it work as long as there was enough space for the files?

hayley