How to get XP installed?

Grrrmachine · 10-30-2005, 04:11 AM

Right, here's my dilemma.

I have a laptop HDD that Im trying to get XP installed onto. I have all the XP files as an .iso on my main PC, which I can open and extract, BUT, I cant actually get XP to install on the second drive.
The problem here is that I cant make the second drive bootable - I need to get some kind of boot command onto the drive so that I can run the install sequence from there. This SHOULD be easy, BUT
a) I dont have a floppy drive, so I cant make a boot floppy
b) I dont have the original XP CD (thats at my house in the UK, 1000 miles away)
c) I dont have a CD-R drive to make a bootable CD.

So how the hell do I get XP installed onto this little drive? I know I can copy NTLDR onto the drive and use a boot.ini, but then the drive needs XP already installed...

lez · 10-30-2005, 06:14 AM

usb / memory stick type thing?

DarquePervert · 10-30-2005, 06:25 AM

Useless is he can't boot to the HDD to be able to read the USB thingie.

Grrrmachine · 10-30-2005, 06:26 AM

Something like that - it's in a USB caddy at the moment, connected to my main PC, but it'll be running on IDE on the CarPC.

I just want to do the old dos thingy - "sys c:" but you cant fscking do that in XP any more, and I dont have a floppy or CD I can boot the PC with to start the install

DarquePervert · 10-30-2005, 06:37 AM

See, you ruled out all my suggestions...
Perhaps you could convince someone to ship you the CD, or wait until you get home....

Grrrmachine · 10-30-2005, 06:42 AM

well, all my gears in storage, and probably will be until 2011

I could just buy a CDRW drive, but I wanted to get this install done this weekend (Im off work till Wednesday)

I was following a giude about making a USB drive bootable by playing around with NTLDR and boot.ini - any way of using this to go straight to the WINNT installer in the I386 folder?

Another option is to find a bootdisk maker that will accept the second hard drive as a floppy drive so I can copy a system file to it, but I cant find anything like that...

Bloody Microsoft. They think they're making our lives EASIER....

reiner15 · 10-30-2005, 06:42 AM

if you could connect to a network that would be one way...

Grrrmachine · 10-30-2005, 06:49 AM

How would that help? I just need a way of getting a system file onto a hard drive without a floppy or CD drive. The hard drive is the slave in a machine already.

rebelleader · 10-30-2005, 07:57 AM

Well as long as you have the ability to take the HD out if the laptop you could Ghost your PC windows install onto your laptop HD. Kind of a messy solution, but without a Burner you are kind of stuck.

lez · 10-30-2005, 08:25 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by DarquePervert

Useless is he can't boot to the HDD to be able to read the USB thingie.

You dont need to boot off a hd to read a usb thingy, I can boot off my friends usb keyring, can even do an install of xp onto it and run the machine with no hd at all.

I was going to do that for the car pc but it wears out the memory stick app.

(of course old machines cant do this, but modern-ish laptops can)

Grrrmachine · 10-30-2005, 08:31 AM

But what boot files do I need to put on the USB device (I have a USB keyring too) to make the fscking thing boot?

Tidder · 10-30-2005, 10:54 AM

use this utility

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/20306.html

even though it says it requires an HP brand device, I've used it with almost everything, sony, lexar, sandisk

kelseymonster · 11-15-2005, 02:20 AM

Here is a website that shows you how to make your own bootable XP cd using Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator. Search the website if you need to use another version of Roxio or another CD burning app.

PM me if you have any questions or if you need something sent to you... (wink)

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=311