So a friend gave me a free windows 8 professional code when he found out I was building a new pc. Having no actual disc I got my hands on an unmodified .iso for windows 8 pro. So far I'v read that I can do one of two things. A) burn the .iso to a dvd, or B) create a bootable flash drive. My question is, if I choose to put the file on a cd does it have to be a dvd or can it be a normal cd? and do I have to do any formatting as I would with a flash drive when burning the .iso to the dvd? (in other words can I just drag and drop the file on the disc and hit burn)
It would have to be a DVD. A CD doesn't have the capacity. The best way would be to use a flash drive.
You can't just drag and drop it though onto a DVD or a flash drive. It needs to be mounted.
http://pcsupport.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=pcsupport&cdn=compute&tm=53&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_p504.6.342.ip_&tt=65&bt=7&bts=7&zu=http%3A//images2.store.microsoft.com/prod/clustera/framework/w7udt/1.0/en-us/Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe
That is the tool from Microsoft. It will walk you through the whole process of formatting the drive and mounting.