Reinstalling windows 7 on laptop that has no optical drive

Tinie

Right so, ive got a Lenovo U450 laptop which has no disc drive. It was working fine when I wanted to do a clean install, and foolishly I powered off the laptop while it was doing the clean install from the image on the HD.
It now says when I boot up "Windows failed to start". A recent hardware or software change might be the case.To fix the problem: Insert windows install disc. etc.."
So im wondering is there a way to reinstall windows without needing a disc drive? Can I access the recovery image on the HD without needing to boot to Windows? I remember on my old Iqon laptop years ago I could do that by pressing R when it was booting. Please help!!

MarkR

You can do it by usb, but you'd need to have an image file already created. You could possible get the image off the hard drive using a linux distro on a usb flash drive, and copy the image to another usb drive, then from another computer make a bootable usb drive from the image.

cookie1977

MarkR wrote: »

You can do it by usb, but you'd need to have an image file already created. You could possible get the image off the hard drive using a linux distro on a usb flash drive, and copy the image to another usb drive, then from another computer make a bootable usb drive from the image.

If you can get it have a look here:
http://gizmodo.com/%23!5257386/how-to-install-windows-7-on-almost-any-netbook

jay93

If you can use another computer with an optical drive you can make a bootable USB drive which ive made myself plenty of times for my notebook

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/120444-how-to-install-windows-from-usb-winsetupfromusb-with-gui/

download links are in the first post its a GUI tool that will make the usb drive a bootable windows install disk have used it many times and is very handy for computers without a DVD drive!

practice

When you first start the computer and before it gets to the windows screen look in top right corner for which key to press usually ( Del, F2 or F10) .
You may get the chance to boot to the recovery partition here.