Is it possible to install Ubuntu without a CD or USB drive? [duplicate]
So basically as it stands I have a laptop which has no cd/dvd drive, and I don't have a usb drive.
The laptop has windows 7 installed with ubuntu 11.04 installed through wubi.
What I want to do is remove windows completely, and make ubuntu the only OS installed on the system.
Is there a way to do this without re-installing ubuntu? (i.e. can I take my wubi install away from windows?)
or is there a way to from inside ubuntu have it run the ubuntu iso somehow so I can just wipe the system and install it fresh? (even if it means I need to have an e.g. 2gb partition just for the image to reside in).
Solution 1:
Yep, all your friend needs to do is download and install Wubi. It's designed for this exact scenario. You can check it out here: http://wubi-installer.org/
Solution 2:
- Use Windows 7 to shrink one of your partitions (you can shrink a mounted partition while running Windows). If you already have 4 primary partitions you'll need to remove one of them first.
- Boot wubi and install GParted and create an extended partition in the free space you created, and then 2 logical partitions, one an ext4 partition large enough to contain your Wubi install, and optionally 1 swap partition (> size of RAM).
- Migrate wubi to the partition, installing the grub bootloader at the same time
- Boot the migrated Ubuntu and format the Windows partition, which you can then reuse as a separate /home or you can use the same migration script to move the migrated Ubuntu to it.
This solution doesn't require a live CD/USB (although it's always a good idea to have one.