Win7 Beta runs fine on my over 2 year HP laptop with 1GB of Ram.
What is the native resolution of the screen on you old Dell laptop?
What happens when you try and increase the resolution?
I believe you can order a set of VISTA installation CDs from MS for a
minimal price provided you have a valid Vista retail product key.

"Bill Sharpe" wrote in message
...
Ant wrote:
Hello.

I have an old Dell Dimension 8250 test PC that I would like to install
Vista onto. However, it has no DVD drives. I cannot even boot from
external USB drives (3.5" disk drive, external HDDs, and DVD burner
drive -- CMOS doesn't see them and found out PC doesn't support bootable
USB devices).

However, I do have enough HDD space (30 GB free on second partition) to
copy Vista DVD (or make an ISO file) onto it through network (will take a
while).

Thank you in advance.
I tried installing Win 7 beta on a five-year-old Dell laptop that I had
upgraded from 256 mb to 1 gb memory. It worked, but I got a 640 by 480
display, no Internet, and no sound. Gave up, of course.

Suspect you will be disappointed if you proceed.

Bill