booting from an iso without a CD drive

[pclown]

My hard disk has a spare partition on which I want to install a new distro, but my CD drive doesn't work and my BIOS doesn't seem to support booting from a USB stick. I considered using virtual box to boot a live cd image but then I'd need to allow the virtual machine access to my hard drive partition. Is there any way of making grub boot just from an iso without using a CD?

[jayd512]

Unetbootin will allow installation over the internet without the need for CD or booting from USB. Just make sure that you have a stable internet connection!

[pclown]

Thanks.

I'm slightly worried however at the fact that my options are all live distros. Is it possible to boot from an ISO without installing it so I can then extract a non-live version to the hard drive?

[jayd512]

Unetbootin doesn't involve LiveCD's. It's a tool for a complete installation.

[pclown]

Thanks. I think I misunderstood what it was doing there.