Has anyone here had experienced installing windows XP using only the USB?
Our office bought a new desktop which does not come preinstalled with XP. There is however an XP CD that came with the package (licensed). However I can't install the OS on a CD without a cd rom.
One way I think would do w/o the use of the USB is that I get the HDD and install from another desktop. However I don't wan't to open the Desktop case since doing so will void the warranty.
What we're they thinking by sending us a WinXP cd when the desktop has no CD drive no Floppy drive?
:whack:
Borrow an external CD drive and hope the BIOS on the target PC is able to boot from CD.
Jim
Problem is I don't have access to an external drive. :*(
If I could only boot from USB (using BARTPE or the likes which makes winxp run on a CD), all would be well. I would only need to copy the \i386 folder to the HDD and setup from there.
Or even DOS booted from USB would be fine.
if it can be done it will be in the bios menu or the boot menu you will see a usb drive in the boot sequence. My pc can boot from usb floppy cd or hdd but i can only choose 3 of them and one must be a hdd. now the only problem that has me lost is how to get a bootable image of the install disk onto a usb drive
This utility http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64963-page,1-c,downloads/description.html (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64963-page,1-c,downloads/description.html) can format a USB stick to make it bootable. Lots of places have FreeDOS to make a fully DOS environment. Where you go from there I don't know - copy all the files off the CD onto the USB stick?
Jim
The original full HP archive is here http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&mode=3&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839 (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&mode=3&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839)
Quote from: rain_storm on December 18, 2007
if it can be done it will be in the bios menu or the boot menu you will see a usb drive in the boot sequence. My pc can boot from usb floppy cd or hdd but i can only choose 3 of them and one must be a hdd. now the only problem that has me lost is how to get a bootable image of the install disk onto a usb drive
I already new about that. :*)
Jim, I have a HP usb drive app. however, what you posted is different from mine and my be newer, I'll try it later.
PS: I also found over at a torrent site a USB based WinXP(BartPE). However I can't test it as I forgot my 1 gb flash drive at work and I only have an old 128 mb flash drive right now and I need about 256 MB of space.
Thanks guys, I'll tell you later what happens.
EDIT:
Jim, http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&mode=3&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839
Is the same as what I have.
:*)
BTW, Jim you mean I could install freedos as bootable using HP? Cool! How'd I do that?
ANyways, once I'll be able to boot of the USB, I could install XP in no time. All I have to do is to copy (xcopy) the contents of the /i386 folder to the HDD and install from there. :*)
NVM: http://genetikayos.livejournal.com/43998.html
The only things I had to fix were to remove EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.SYS from the CONFIG.SYS file because they crash my PC on startup. You might *need* them to run setup.exe, though. I didn't bother to find out *why* they were crashing.
Jim
Yay! Done.
1. I made a usb portable winxp by setting up a low level fomat and making the flash disk bootable by setting it to "0e, 80"
2. Copied some Bart pe usb files over to the usb
3. Copied the /i386 folder from the xp cd to flash
4. Copied a partition tool to flash
5. Booted from usb
6. Prepare HDD(partition, format, etc)
7. Copy /i386 folder to hdd.
8. Run Winnt32.exe to install.
Thanks for the help guys.