Install nlited XP home from USB, using recovery disk?

[dicetumbler]

Hey, everyone. Was hoping I could get some insight on this.

I've bought myself an eeepc with XP preinstalled. What I'd like to do is to have a very slimmed-down, nlited XP, so I can put a linux distro on top of it.

The thing is, my resources are somewhat limited. The eeepc doesen't come with an optical drive, so I'd like to do this without having a boot CD, and instead use my usb hard drive.

Here's what I have: the eeepc, an ubuntu desktop with a CD-RW/DVD drive, and a usb external hard drive, the recovery DVD that was bundled with the eeepc, and an XP product key that's stickered to my eeepc. I also found this link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en, which I think could be used? I was told that the recovery disk wouldn't have the actual Windows file, but there's folders marked

-I386

-WinPE.ISO ASUS Recovery System - Windows PE 1.0

-Recovery ASUS Eee PC 701 - Windows XP SP2 recovery image V1.0.02.

-i386XP Eee PC Multi-Language package.

... in addition to drivers and software.

I also have access to another pc with windows and a CD drive, but I'd like to see if I can avoid using it, since I'm trying to make my life as difficult as possible.

So is this at all theoretically possible? Where do I even start? This is probably way out of my league, skillz-wise, but it would be so sweet if I could get this to work, particularly since I imagine there's other users out there in a similar situation.

[jaclaz]

Right question.

Wrong forum.

Right one is here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/Install-XP-from-USB-f157.html

But you first need to "re-build" an install CD, or at least make sure you do have all needed files.

Start from here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/nlite-with-no-wi...cd-t113480.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/Cannot-access-CD...P-i-t91907.html

jaclaz