Thread: Boot Win on hdd from floppy!

Hi all,

I found a solution how to boot WinXP installed on hdd from a bootable floppy.

1) You need a startup disks for XP (6 diskettes), can be downloadded from MS web as a 1 file (choose your language, my is non-english; czech)
2) Run downloadded program, it extract 6 files (cdboot1.img ... cdboot6.img) in your temporary folder (c:\documments and settings\_user_\local settings\temp\IXP000.TMP)
3) Do NOT close running program (if you close it, it deletes this 6 files). Copy 1st file (cdboot1.img) to a another folder, it is a bootable one.
4) Run WinImage (program for manage images -.ima, img)
5) Delete all files except ntdetect.com and bootfont.bin (maybe needded only on non-english system)
6) Find in your C:\ (on the root) file ntldr (without extension) and boot.ini and copy both it to a folder where is cdboot1.img
7) Rename ntldr to new name setupldr.bin
8) Inject this 2 files to cdboot1.img (opened with WinImage)
9) Save image file on WinImage.

Thats all!

This boot image can boot only WinXP (and maybe Win2000) OS on YOUR hdd (becouse you use YOUR boot.ini). But you can add more lines to your boot.ini (in cdboot1.img!) as described:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows=" ..." /fastdetect ...
...
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\Windows=" ..." /fastdetect ...
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Windows=" ..." /fastdetect ...
...
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(4)\Windows=" ..." /fastdetect ...

and now, you can boot any WinXP on the 1st or 2nd hdd drive, from 1st partition till 4th partition ...

Pavel