I d/l Vista and it's an ISO file on my desktop. You're supposed to burn it to a DVD cd and boot it, but I don't have a DVD burner. Is there a way I can install this without burning it? maybe through command prompt?

I got this from the Microsoft website

Mounting ISO files virtually - You can use the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP (http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe)tool to mount the ISO image file virtually as CD-ROM devices without burning the image to a DVD. This tool is provided here for your convenience, and is unsupported by Microsoft Customer Services and Support.

thanks let me give it a try

Another question, I opened the ISO with winrar and the only thing that is in it is a readme file that says

This disc contains a "UDF" file system and requires an operating system
that supports the ISO-13346 "UDF" file system specification.

any clue why it doesn't show an exe or anything? I know theres stuff their because the file is 2.39gb

UDF is a format that won't even show up unless you mount it using something like InCD, but it may if you use the ISO CD Mounting tool.

ok thanks for your help first off, I mounted the ISO with that link above. There are no directions after mounting it other than this

"You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control."

So how do I get this to run now?

You should be able to go to your windows explorer and open that drive to find setup.exe (theoretically, I haven't tested that)

You should be able to go to your windows explorer and open that drive to find setup.exe (theoretically, I haven't tested that)

So are you saying I should be able to just open the ISO file now? If so I tried that and it does the same thing. Here is a ss of the program with the ISO mounted. I'm thinking I'd need to boot my comp from the Z: ... but to do this I'd have to reboot thus closing the program below.

http://i13.tinypic.com/2lniwi0.jpg

I haven't tried it but I would have thought you could open Windows Explorer and go to that drive, but maybe it won't work like that.

OK if you want to run Vista alongside XP I would recommend you do a couple of things first:

1) Back up your important data - if you dont have a burner this could be a long process

2) Create new partition to install Vista on - instructions here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348)

3) iirc in Vista setup you can choose a partition to install it - I haven't used the Windows emulation software so not sure how it works but I imagine when you select mount you should have a new drive (from your screenshot y:\) navigate to there and run setup.exe.

If your having trouble with this download Daemon Tools (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/announcements.php) this is much more user friendly.

Oh one other thing you say you dont have a DVD burner is this because you PC may be a bit old ? if so did you run the Vista compatability check here (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx)?
If you do this and pass then guess what you might be able to run it but it could still be slow as we all know what M$ minimum requirements mean ;) oh and note the part about the Aero user experience (on an early release I couldn't even run that and I've got an Athlon 3200+, 1gig RAM and a 256meg Radion 6600 GT :eek: - ok it was an earlier version but you get the idea)