Making Windows boot drive with another computer?

I want to put Windows 8.1 on my mid-2012 Macbook Pro Retina (running OSX 10.8), and have been reading up on the preparatory steps. The official documentation says you need to have a DVD drive to create an iso on a usb to install Windows - but my Macbook doesn't have an optical drive, and I don't have access to an external drive either. I've seen some threads here on how to create a boot drive with just an iso, but those are a bit technical for me and I'd rather shell out money for a drive than worry about bricking my laptop if I screw something up there.

On the other hand, I do have access to two computers with DVD drives: a 2010 Mac Mini running 10.9 and a PC running Windows 7. Is there a way to make the boot drive using another computer and run it on my laptop? For instance, can I run bootcamp assistant on the Mac Mini without partitioning the drive, and then the assistant on my Macbook Pro without creating the boot usb, or will there be compatibility issues?

Thanks for the help!

xcodeSyn said:

Here's a direct quote from Apple's documentation from this link:


and I don't see anywhere it says that a DVD drive is required. If you happen to have a Windows installer in DVD format, you could then use ImgBurn from a PC to extract the ISO file to prepare the USB installer, but DVD drive is not required as you seemed to imply.

Click to expand...

Ah - thank you. I misread that section of the documentation as needing both the DVD and the usb/iso file rather than an 'or'. Looks like it's easier than I was making it out to be...