Extract Windows ISO to a hard drive partition and boot from it. @Try3

bro67 said:

No, you need to use a USB stick.

Op is confused between a repair upgrade and a clean install.

I am sorry but it is not true that you have ti boot from a usb drive to do a clean install (it is the most convenient way, but not the only way).

You can create a separate partition (NTFS formatted with a drive letter), and copy all of the files from the iso to that partition.

At this point, you can create a boot entry for it using easbcd (easiest way).

You can even kick off the installation from Windows without a boot entry by running setup.exe from the sources folder not the root, but you need an existing partition with a drive letter that will get overwritten if you use this approach.

Of course, for a repair upgrade, you just mount iso as a drive and run setup.exe.

mike ten said:

My OS is Windows 10 Pro x64 version 22H2 (OS build 19045.2965).

I want to Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade.
I have downloaded the latest official Windows 10 ISO file from Microsoft using Media Creation Tool.

Question: is it possible to extract the ISO to the hard drive (instead of ISO disk or USB), and install from it?

P.S. I have the SSD and HDD drives.

I appreciate your instructions.

An inplace upgrade does not need you to install from a drive.

Just mount iso as a drive and run setup.exe from root of mounted iso.

Other people are typing faster then I am.

Yes you can, you do not need to burn it to a USB Flash drive first. Or create a partition.
If you have downloaded the ISO image, right click the file and choose Mount.
This will create a Virtual DVD drive with the contents of the ISO image. Inside this drive
Double click Setup.exe. This will start the setup and ask if you want to do an install Saving Files? or Do you want to do a Clean Install

Mike,

I misunderstood your original PM. As others have said above, if all you are trying to do is run a Repair install then you can do that straight from the ISO -
- Double-click on it in File explorer to 'mount' it {it will be shown as a separate drive of its own},
- Run its setup.exe file.

For some reason that I no longer understand, I thought you were asking how to extract the ISO to a hard drive partition to be able to boot from it & run a clean install.


All the best,
Denis

Mike,

The Thane you quote has used a very complicated way of saying what I said and what others said in earlier posts.
But he goes on to talk about bootloaders and they are not relevant to your question.

For the avoidance of doubt:-
- You do not need to do anything with your ISO file beforehand in order to be able to use the ISO for a Repair install / In-place upgrade should you ever need one.
- You do not need any third-party tools in order to be able to use the ISO for a Repair install / In-place upgrade should you ever need one.


Denis

mike ten said:

How can I write an .img or .iso file on a SATA drive?

What do you have on the .img or .iso?
Is the SATA drive clean or does it has a OS?
You can always create a partition and boot to it. With a UEFI BIOS it is very simple.
I have a data GPT drive that I created a 2G Fat32 partition and installed a WinPE with some recovery tools. To boot from it I use the BOOT menu at POST to select the boot loader on the partition.