The CD/DVD drive on my Thinkpad stopped working quite a while ago. After spending about two hours trying to fix it I’ve decided the drive itself it probably broken. So my question is can I install over a network. Now, I know I could stick a music/data CD in another computer and pull it over to my computer, but can I install something (QuickBooks 2007 specifically) over the network. If not, I know I could just pull all the data (ala rip) over to a directory on my computer, could I just install it that way?
Or do I need to go and scout out a new drive for this computer (either a replacement internal or an external USB) to do the install.
If you can use another computer to create a CD image file, you can put that onto a USB stick, and mount it so that Windows sees it as a CD-Rom using Daemon Tools.
With most software, you can indeed install from a network share. That is how 99% of software is installed in large businesses. You just need to map a drive (or connect to the UNC path) and run setup.
There are some programs which do perform a check to see that the CD is in the drive, as an anti-theft method, and some (mainly games) which will **install ** just fine over the network, but require the disk in the drive to run.
Unfortunately, I don’t know which category QuickBooks falls into.