Help crashed hard drive/boot from USB?

[skullsandsilver]

ok i have a dell Minnie. My hard-drive is toast. i have a 32gig scandisck flash drive and a 14 gig sd card. I have the instillation disk. i put the files on the usb flash drive can i run the dell from a flash drive? without a hard drive just a flash drive i tried and it said something was missing its like it wanted to install it on a drive but could not find a drive and would not install it to itself or run off the usb drive what can i do?

 

[WR2]

Hello skullsandsilver;

If you're not going to replace the hard drive you need to make a LiveCD type bootable drive and not an installation drive.

Here is an example of a bootable LiveCD:
Ubuntu Desktop: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
It's a complete OS on a flash drive that doesn't need a HDD to run.

There are some guides to making a Windows version of a LiveCD but it's not a complete OS like Ubuntu. It's more of a RescueCD to help gain access to a HDD (which you don't have).

 

[WR2]

example: How to Create a Windows 7 Live CD the Easy Way