Other means of installing windows 7?

You could try pulling out the DVD drive from your current computer and temporarily moving it to your old computer for the installation.

@drdoombot The one I’m running now is a Gateway, and the old one is a Dell. Should they still be compatible?

Assuming they’re both desktops it should work fine, yeah.

Are you sure you really want to do this? The hardware is a little dated. It will run like shit. Maybe as server it would be ok.

@johnpowell I was thinking of using an Ubuntu server, but I realized I didn’t really need one, and It would probably hog the bandwidth. I upgraded the ram on the old computer, but I still would probably need a better video card to go with it, or I could replace the whole mother board which I definitely don’t want to go to the expense.

If I had a box that old I’d put a nice<tm> Linux distro on it, and use it as a fileserver.

Ooops, slippage, sorry.

@pdworkin I was using Ubuntu on it in plan of doing that, but they don’t seem to communicate with each other through the Ethernet cable I had.

Is this a case of, “Using it because I have it?” There is probably a poor kid that needs a computer.

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@johnpowell I was the poor kid who needed it, then I happened to find a better computer. I still use the old computer whenever something bad happens to my running one, or so I can let someone else use that computer instead of sharing one.

Also kids here can get free used computers from their schools if they have good grades and have a good use for one.