Install an OS, (iso file) without burning it on a CD or making a bootable USB flash drive

I'm trying to install windows 8 developer preview.

I've already downloaded the ISO. Now I should burn it on a CD or create a bootable flash drive....zzz

I was wondering, can I skip this step? Can I somehow unpack the ISO and boot from it straight away?

4 Answers

MEMDISK, part of SYSLINUX, can boot a ISO from another bootloader. You might need to use GRUB or LILO though rather than the NT bootloader.

If you are using a VM (such as VirtualBox), all you need to do is tell the VM to boot from the ISO on your drive; but if you want to install it on your HD you will need to burn it to a CD/USB, unless you have GRUB or LILO like @Ignacio says.

However, doing it this way may have some problems; for more info check out this SuperUser question

You could image the ISO to a spare hard drive/partition and then boot from that.

You can make a partition on your hard drive. Extract the ISO on to that partition. Then change the boot order to boot into that partition.