Install Windows 10 without a USB stick

almoststew1990 · 3 Jan 2026 at 10:04

I have a Socket 775 project PC that does not want to boot from a USB stick with Windows 10 on it. The USB stick is fine and has been used on lots of old unreliable BIOS and UEFI PCs to install windows 10.

I know from fiddling with Windows 98 you put the set up files on C: and run setup from a DOS prompt. Can I do something similar for Windows 10? Format the SSD to whatever Windows 10 on BIOS (not uefi) would use and then boot into freedos and run C:\setup.exe?

Is there any other way to install Windows 10 that doesn't involve burning DVDs (boot over LAN or something?)

The PC sees the USB stick during POST. In the BIOS I can boot from USB-HDD, USB-FDD etc.

Ben Cole · 3 Jan 2026 at 10:09

Personally I'd install it on a different system then move the SSD to the he system in question.

I've done this numerous times and found windows 10 to be quite resilient to driver conflicts before getting the correct drivers installed.

almoststew1990 · 3 Jan 2026 at 10:23

Yeah that's a good idea. I might even try it after that first HDD set up + copying files phase and before the second boot/phase of installing...

ED209 · 3 Jan 2026 at 10:24

Have you checked to make sure the USB stick is FAT32 and not NTFS?

Found this video on installing over a LAN which may help, does require 3rd party software to be installed on another PC

nade · 3 Jan 2026 at 10:52

Could possibly try Ventoy. I have seen and heard it mentioned, but to be honest never had any need to try it. But from what I understand is you would setup the USB drive to boot up to Ventoy and simply have the Windows10 installer ISO sitting on the drive and select to boot from it that way?

Ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.

www.ventoy.net

almoststew1990 · 3 Jan 2026 at 13:30

I "installed" W10 on the SSD up to the first reboot on a different (also old, BIOS) machine and then swapped the SSD back into the trouble PC and it continued the install no problem. Hopefully fewer driver issues than letting it do a full install before swapping but either way it is working fine.

Ben Cole · 3 Jan 2026 at 13:51

almoststew1990 said:
I "installed" W10 on the SSD up to the first reboot on a different (also old, BIOS) machine and then swapped the SSD back into the trouble PC and it continued the install no problem. Hopefully fewer driver issues than letting it do a full install before swapping but either way it is working fine.

Result.

darael · 3 Jan 2026 at 22:35

almoststew1990 said:
I "installed" W10 on the SSD up to the first reboot on a different (also old, BIOS) machine and then swapped the SSD back into the trouble PC and it continued the install no problem. Hopefully fewer driver issues than letting it do a full install before swapping but either way it is working fine.

I used a similar method to install Windows 10 on a laptop which shouldn't really have had it installed - it had a 44-pin laptop IDE connector, if you want an idea of it's age. Basically it had a CD drive so couldn't read DVDs and couldn't boot from USB drives at all :eek:

I've found the specs, and it had a 30GB hard drive installed, 1GB of RAM and some mobile Celeron CPU.

I remember installing Windows onto the hard drive from my own PC, for which I think I used a SATA > IDE adapter. You just need to get the Windows 10 installer to copy the files over, turn the PC off when the installer restarts and swap the drive back into the intended machine.

Edit: Thinkng about it, I may have installed Windows 7 as Windows 10 was having none of it.