Question So I got a 3.6gb ISO of Windows10. Now what.....

[tom2u]

Extracted its the same size. Can I copy the extracted contents on to a formatted hard drive, change the bios to start on that drive, and will it boot from that or do I need to copy the extracted contents to a DVD-RW? Or will it boot from the ISO file? That seems unlikely. I don't have a USB drive that big handy. I just want to play with Win10 for a bit before I commit. I'll probably need better hardware and that might take a while to acquire. Using 16gb DDR3 with a i5 quad core 3.1 ghz CPU and its built on video.

 

[Bob.B]

Extracted its the same size. Can I copy the extracted contents on to a formatted hard drive, change the bios to start on that drive, and will it boot from that or do I need to copy the extracted contents to a DVD-RW? Or will it boot from the ISO file? That seems unlikely. I don't have a USB drive that big handy. I just want to play with Win10 for a bit before I commit. I'll probably need better hardware and that might take a while to acquire. Using 16gb DDR3 with a i5 quad core 3.1 ghz CPU and its built on video.

I think what you want to do is get a 8GB flash stick and then use the media creation tool.

 

[kerberos_20]

on some systems it will boot, on some not

if youre on windows, you can run setup.exe from that extracted iso, and from there you can proceed to install windows...you can do either upgrade or new fresh install
going with new install, preferably you would want to install it on second drive or to different partition
either way your old windows will remain there unchanged and during boot you can switch between old and new windowses

 

[Colif]

.you can do either upgrade or new fresh install

i doubt you could run a fresh install from an iso on the hdd. Where does it exist exactly after you format the drive?
Installer would probably break about part you have wiped previous install.
A windows 10 install isn't booting off the actual drive its installed on until a few restarts in. We found this before when someone reattached an old install when he got to the 1st restart and windows added itself to the boot partition on the old install. It also explains why installs stop working if you remove usb at 1st restart.

You can use a dvd, USB or another hdd to install from, but you can't clean install it on the drive its on.

 

[kerberos_20]

A windows 10 install isn't booting off the actual drive its installed on until a few restarts in.

well it can boot from drive...i do have iso installers on hdd aswell (ranging from win7 to win11), you cant have extracted iso on system drive (C:\), other partitions will work
no need for second drive as long there is free space on partition were you want to install windows

there are some workarounds aswell in some cases, but...

Can I copy the extracted contents on to a formatted hard drive

is that a seperate drive on your pc you want to install windows,
or you want to prepare bootable installer on hdd for another PC (crete bootable windows installer on hdd, then unplug it and move to another PC)

if its a PC you currently have, what operating system do you have right now?

 

[logainofhades]

I believe you can extract ISO's, with winrar, onto a flash drive. I vaguely remember doing such things, when I was using Win7 iso's from my technet subscription.

 

[kerberos_20]

I believe you can extract ISO's, with winrar, onto a flash drive. I vaguely remember doing such things, when I was using Win7 iso's from my technet subscription.

yes it will work on most systems
uefi - fat32 or ntfs primary parittion
non uefi - ntfs primary partition

primary ntfs is bootable by nature, fat32 on uefi just lunches from efi folder boot files, nonuefi fat32 would need bootsector change on older systems