How to install Windows from USB- WinSetupFromUSB with GUI

[ilko_t]

Here comes the first GUI for our little project.

What it can be used for adding to your USB stick/disk:

• Multiple sets of Windows setup files- XP, 2000, 2003, Vista, WIndows 7, Server 2008, Windows 8, Server 2012, both 32 and 64 bit versions are supported
• Multiple WinPE2 (Vista and above) based sources from ISO files such as Windows Defender Offline, recent Norton Ghost versions and PE (preinstallation environment) based PC manufacturers recovery disks.
• Single WinPE1 source, such as BartPE, UBCD4Win, LiveXP and similar WinBuilder projects, WinFLPC etc.
• Multiple Linux based distributions and utilities from ISO files- Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS to name a few, this includes most Antivirus Rescue Disks
• Many other ISO images as long as they are compatible with grub4dos CD emulation, such as Ultimate Boot CD, Windows 95/98 and most DOS based utilities, Acronis and Paragon boot disks and so on
• Syslinux boot meny and optionally single source which uses Syslinux or Isolinux as boot loader

WinSetupFromUSB can also prepare Windows XP (2000, 2003) setup files to be installed onto a USB disk. I've put some FAQ and Tutorials.
Here is a incomplete list of tested sources.


If reporting problems, please attach your compressed log file (WinSetupFromUSB.log) and the exact steps to reproduce the problem. Thanks


Warning: Several antivirus vendors detect the included in many versions setup.ex_ and setup_dbg.ex_ as viruses. This is false positive:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141734-virus-suspected-in-xp-inst-v047z/
You may need to turn temporarily off your antivirus protection when using the program. Hopefully AV vendors will respond at last to the numerous emails sent and take off those signatures.

Downloads and changelog:
http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/downloads/

Edited October 18, 2013 by ilko_t
Post rearanged

[ilko_t]

I preferred this part to be in a separate post, as it is important:

Credits to jaclaz, cdob and wimb for their continuous help and contribution on Installing XP from USB and not only, without who this wouldn't have happened, and porear for bringing this project up and putting it in the right direction, as well as to everyone, who contributed to the project with ideas, requests or feedback- signal64, andy_le2k, lilas to mention few of them.

Thanks to UglyBob, ptrex, SmOke_N, aec and ezzetabi from AutoIt forum for their excellent AutoIt script examples, parts of which were used.

Thanks to Anton Bassov for his dummydisk.sys driver and help for reverting it's behaviour to rdummy.sys, which makes USB fixed disks to be seen as removable.

Thanks to Tynibit for his excellent work and support on GRUB4Dos, and Bean123 for grubinst.exe and touchdrv.exe.

And last but not least credits to creators of all tools, which were used in this project- Grub4DOS, PEtoUSB, HP USB format utility, HDHacker, SysLinux, binifix.cmd(did I mention Jaclaz, cdob and wimb?), QEMU, DRVLoad and sync.exe...

[jaclaz]

I actually had the feeling you were up to something.....

....good work!

Making it a sticky....

jaclaz

[ilko_t]

You should trust your feelings

I was in my 'bucket list'

Anyone thinking of GUI ?

[wimb]

Hallo ilko,

Congratulations with your WinSetupFromUSB_0-1A Program.

It looks fine, and I did three runs with it, and could Install XP in all cases.

What I miss is the action of MkMigrateInf2.cmd to make the USB-stick DriveLetter U:

So now my first install had shifted drive letters for the 2nd and 3rd partition.

The menu entries in GRUB4DOS menu.lst at the moment do not allow Unattended Install.

On Reboot again TXT-mode Setup is automatically selected.

I reverted the entries and then everything went OK.

At best the Continue+Start XP entry should occur as first line in menu.lst.

Another wish would be the possibility to Exclude LANG / WIN98 folders from copy to USB-stick.

And Display and Edit of XP Setup Parameters in winnt.sif + useraccount in $OEM$ folder.

It would also be nice if winnt.sif and $OEM$ would be User selectable.

Now everything must be ready in the XP-Source.

Some people may want to Select the option of Attended Setup at the moment of Install from USB.

But all these wishes are may be interesting for future developments.

For now the program is running rather well.

The message of No enough Space is a bit Confusing when Copy to USB-stick is Ready.

It will propably be due to my test stick of only 1 GB but in most cases Ready would be a better message.

I forgot to mention that the presetup.cmd is giving No Disk Exception Message (4x) for my CardReader.

Pressing 4x Continue makes XP Setup Resume.

The search for the USB-drive tagfile can be first in a limited Drive-range, like for ren_fold.cmd

That solves the problem.

Thanks for this program.

Succes,

wimb

[ilko_t]

Thanks Wimb, this was very helpful

What I miss is the action of MkMigrateInf2.cmd to make the USB-stick DriveLetter U:
So now my first install had shifted drive letters for the 2nd and 3rd partition.

It's on purpose. I prefer to watch USB drive letter as indicator if something goes wrong and USB disk is recognized as first, as you know then boot files goes on it etc..

I had cases, when even with rdummy.sys, my USB disk was detected as fixed, because it was the last among many mass storage drivers to load. Had to move it to BusExtenders, where it seems to load fine.

The shifted drive letters are easily fixed later on from Disk management, which causes no harm to the installation.

Still a good idea to include it, just in case someone prefers to use it.

The menu entries in GRUB4DOS menu.lst at the moment do not allow Unattended Install

Haven't had tome to fix that. I prefer not to change order as it breaks the logic 1) then 2) ..., but rather use grub4dos options to set default entry once TXT mode entry was executed. Added to to-do list.

Another wish would be the possibility to Exclude LANG / WIN98 folders from copy to USB-stick.

No plans for this There is a beautiful program Nlite, which does this job. Source is used and copied as it is prepared. Messing with the source is beyond the scope of the program.

And Display and Edit of XP Setup Parameters in winnt.sif + useraccount in $OEM$ folder

Ditto Source is copied as it is. Same applies for winnt.sif, which is amended ONLY with the entries, allowing installation from USB. NLite and other similar programs are to be used if one wants to manipulate his source and unattended file. Same for $OEM$- if it's there- it's copied.

Additionally- many people just want to install the XP source they have from USB, without answering too much questions and presented with information, which means nothing to them. I assume, that whoever knows what winnt.sif is, he should know or at least capable to find what to edit, in order to customize his installation. This is not job for the program. If you remember we have discussed that before on PM

For now the program is running rather well

Good to read

The message of No enough Space is a bit Confusing when Copy to USB-stick is Ready.

It will propably be due to my test stick of only 1 GB but in most cases Ready would be a better message.

Good catch, I never run out of disk space lately as I was using USB hard disk. Upon completion I will reset all checkboxes and Windows source, then do the size check. Thanks.

I forgot to mention that the presetup.cmd is giving No Disk Exception Message (4x) for my CardReader.

Pressing 4x Continue makes XP Setup Resume.

The search for the USB-drive tagfile can be first in a limited Drive-range, like for ren_fold.cmd

This is an issue with BTS drivers pack presetup.cmd., which I prefer to resolve in other way- by opening a ticket in their forum. The program simply adds a few lines to the presetup.cmd, which already exists. Thus the difference between ren_fold.cmd and presetup.cmd.

But bringing this up reminded me that I forgot to fully cover the case when presetup.cmd doesn't exist.

Thanks for the detailed feedback

[wimb]

Thanks Wimb, this was very helpful

Another wish would be the possibility to Exclude LANG / WIN98 folders from copy to USB-stick.

No plans for this There is a beautiful program Nlite, which does this job. Source is used and copied as it is prepared. Messing with the source is beyond the scope of the program.

If you just don't copy LANG / WIN98 folders to USB-stick,

then I don't think you can speak of "Messing with the source",

whereas this statement is more applicable when using nLite.

[ilko_t]

If you just don't copy LANG / WIN98 folders to USB-stick,

then I don't think you can speak of "Messing with the source",

whereas this statement is more applicable when using nLite.

It's removing of functionality, which is supposed to be done while messing with the source with NLite, and not by a program, which idea is to transfer already prepared source to USB disk, and make it ready for installation from USB

In other words I'd prefer to keep it as simple as possible, requiring user to prepare it's source in advance, using external tools such as NLite.

[wimb]

In other words I'd prefer to keep it as simple as possible, requiring user to prepare it's source in advance, using external tools such as NLite.

Now you force people to use a tool like nLite, and go through all the pages,

just for specifying the 8 essential parameters required for Unattended XP Setup.

Besides nLite needs .NET Framework 2.0 to be installed.

How do you help the people who don't work with nLite and

would like to specify their 8 XP Setup Parameters for Unattended Setup in a simple dialoque ?

This is an issue with BTS drivers pack presetup.cmd., which I prefer to resolve in other way- by opening a ticket in their forum. The program simply adds a few lines to the presetup.cmd, which already exists. Thus the difference between ren_fold.cmd and presetup.cmd.

Nowadays BTS presetup.cmd has a line to delete setupold, so it is not needed to do this twice.

Edited July 14, 2008 by wimb

[bledd]

wow, will try this out later on

thanks for all the hard work

[jaclaz]

Now you force people to use a tool like nLite, and go through all the pages,

just for specifying the 8 essential parameters required for Unattended XP Setup.

Wimb, maybe you are making it a bit heavier than needed.

Noone is forcing people to do anything, if people does not want to use this GUI tool they can use your more featured .cmd.

There is a possibility, that you seem not to take into account, that one already has a perfectly lited, tweaked and tuned up source (these steps made with whatever methods) and simply wants to use that source to install it from USB.

As I see it, this project is somewhat different from your USB_Multiboot, it is not a GUI translation of it, just a simple, honest, plain, "Install from XP USB" GUI app, it is not intended to compete or replicate the already working, full featured batches.

You may notice that most of the (very few) reported problems with your batches were "tracked down" to the user having made a wrong or inappropriate choice among the several possibilities the USB_Multiboot offers, if you remamber I even (frienldy ) once accused you of being caught by "featuritis"....

jaclaz

[wimb]

There is a possibility, that you seem not to take into account, that one already has a perfectly lited, tweaked and tuned up source (these steps made with whatever methods) and simply wants to use that source to install it from USB.

I am quite well aware of this, but I was just thinking of the people,

who would like to specify their 8 parameters for Unattended XP Setup in a simple way.

In general I agree with you and may be my idea is useful for future developments.

[tap52384]

This is awesome! This is always something that I wanted to do, especially since I assume that installation from USB is not only more convenient, but faster than installing from DVD, or am I wrong? In any case, an nLite collaboration would be cool as well, to be able to nLite XP and then install it from USB!

[ilko_t]

Now you force people to use a tool like nLite, and go through all the pages,

just for specifying the 8 essential parameters required for Unattended XP Setup.

Besides nLite needs .NET Framework 2.0 to be installed.

How do you help the people who don't work with nLite and

would like to specify their 8 XP Setup Parameters for Unattended Setup in a simple dialoque ?

Jaclaz answered better than I could

Nowadays BTS presetup.cmd has a line to delete setupold, so it is not needed to do this twice.

Are you sure one will be using source, prepared with the nowadays BTS DP base- I wasn't

The line doesn't hurt, and was easier for me to add it anyway, instead of checking if it's already in presetup.cmd. I can fix it quickly if you think it's a problem.

Checking sizes upon completion if fixed now, decided to uncheck all the check boxes and reset windows source when copy is completed.

Presetup.cmd is now properly created if it was not in the source. Will upload new version when a few more bugs are fixed.

Grub4dos unattended- this is a bit tricky.

default /default
fallback X

title Text mode....
....
savedefault fallback

title Gui mode
....

The thing is that lines are added to menu.lst, and I don't know what X will be, could scan for it, but that will take time to program. Besides, the above entries are created in pairs for each Windows source added, although the second entry (GUI mode) could be common for all the Windows sources as it will point to the same NTLDR/BOOT.INI.

Need to think how to organize menu.lst or reorganize it upon completion.

It may be easier just to include a few lines in ReadMe.txt- if you want the second part of Setup to launch automatically after first part is executed then....

Edited July 14, 2008 by ilko_t

[jaclaz]

@Wimb

@ilko_t

Why not a SEPARATE Auto-it .script "The8Steps4unattended.exe" ?

Grub4dos unattended- this is a bit tricky.

default /default
fallback X

title Text mode....
....
savedefault fallback

title Gui mode
....

The thing is that lines are added to menu.lst, and I don't know what X will be, could scan for it, but that will take time to program. Besides, the above entries are created in pairs for each Windows source added, although the second entry (GUI mode) could be common for all the Windows sources as it will point to the same NTLDR/BOOT.INI.

Need to think how to organize menu.lst or reorganize it upon completion.

It may be easier just to include a few lines in ReadMe.txt- if you want the second part of Setup to launch automatically after first part is executed then....

Can you explain better the problem?

jaclaz