[How lite is your xp?]

I have here an 210MB WinXP with seventeen Post SP2-Patches and nearly 10MB of Drivers.

[Install From Hard Disk]

if you want it to install then instead of letting it boot from cd, have the CD boot into dos, and then run

winnt /s:sourcepath /t:tempdrive /u:answer-file

That way it will copy the files needed to the hard drive, and then install from there.  No need for the CD after that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

sounds interresting.

but what is an answer-file?

[Partitionning And Formatting Before Install]

After this, here is my question :

Why the drive letters are not the same ?

I think I've seen that it's impossible with BartPE to tell the CD is letter Z: (for example)... could someone confirm ?

Anyone having some hints / links to read about this ?

Thanks!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

yeah, that doesn't work. The assigned 'E:\' was only assigned for BartPE. On any other OS/Setup/Whatever it's the next free letter and this is the D:\. (well, that's not exactly correct. If you have for example 2 harddisks, the primar partition of first hdd gets the C:\ and the primar partition of second hdd get's the D:\ (under the circumstance that it's formatted))

unfortunatly i have to say, that you could do your whole stuff without even using BartPE or any other extra PartitionTool. there is a dirty way to do this on setup. Let me explain!

starting point is one fully unpartitioned harddisk....

1. start the installation-process and wait until the screen comes where you can chose the destination-drive

2. because there is no partition on disk you now have to make at least one

3. just follow the instructions for making your 'C:\' and of course 'D:\'

problem is now, that 'D:\' has to be formatted for the profiles-dir. if not, an error would occur. what we can do about it?

4. now that both partitions are there, you just say, that you wanna install windows to drive 'D:\' (yeah, you read right)

now you have to chose the filesystem which is followed by formatting

5. shortly before the formatting ends you open your CD-Drive!!!

after formatting an error occurs that windows can't copy files (because the CD is missing )

6. this is the time, to put the CD back into drive and the setup goes back to the stage of chosing the destination-drive

now you chose 'C:\' and 'D:\' is already formatted