A friend and I are planning to set up his laptop tonight with his Vista Ultimate disc. But the problem is that his CD drive is broken. Can we install Vista from a USB flash drive? How would we do that?Ok I found these:
HTTP://www.askvg.com/how-to-create-bootable-usb-drive-to-install-windows-vista/
http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry

They want me to partition the usb disk. Will I be able to repartition it and use it for data storage afterwards? Is there an easier way to install Vista from a flash drive?I was about to say NO.
Then I did a Google.
They  say you can.
Install VISTA with no DVD
http://www.google.com/search?q=Install+VISTA+with+no+DVD

EDIT: MS has a way to do Windows 7 from a USB. It can PUT the ISO file onto a USB device. But I did not see if that can be done with Vista.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/15/how-to-install-windows-7-or-vista-from-bootable-portable-usb-flash-memory-key-or-hard-disk-drive/
http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry?ppud=4&wa=wsignin1.0&sa=135154421At least Microsoft made it somewhat possible. I installed windows 7 from a usb driveVista was not designed to be installed from a USB flash drive, but Microsoft designed Win7 to be installed from flash drives. Tell me: How MANY netbooks have you saw running Vista? Microsoft announced that it would be easy to install Win7 on netbooks because with Windows 7 all you had to do was copy the files from the setup DVD to a USB flash drive.With XP and Vista the files need to be built properly for this to work...at least they paid attention with Win7...Ive been trying to re-install vista/7 but BIOS is locked, we've been looking for a way to boot off usb w/o going on bios and changing boot sequence bcos its locked, no luck so far? Any suggestions? Oh, and i have no administration privileges she did but the password is lost somewhere in  her head, she never even knew she set a bios p/w, tried leaving blank, tried safemode... ty