A method for remote installation of a target operating system is carried out on a machine operating a source operating system. In one embodiment, it is presumed that the source operating system was booted from a first bootable region of a storage associated with the machine. According to the method, a copy of the source operating system together with the target operating system are delivered to the machine and stored in a second bootable region of the storage. The copy of the source operating system may be stored in a first partition of the second bootable region of the storage, and the target operating system may be stored in a second partition of the second bootable region. A boot loader is then configured to boot the copy of the source operating system from the second bootable region of the storage. The machine is then re-booted. At this point, the machine is still running the source operating system, although in this case that operating system was booted from the second bootable region of the storage. The original source operating system (from the first bootable region) is then removed, and the boot loader is re-configured to boot the target operating system from the second bootable region of the storage. The machine is then re-booted again, after which the target operating system is operational. In one embodiment, the first and second bootable regions may be separate hard disks, and the source and target operating systems are Linux and Windows, or vice versa.