Speeding up the DOS installation part of Windows XP?

[heffalump]

Hi! I am sure I saw a guide somewhere detailing how to make Windows XP faster through the initial DOS installation part (the blue screen). In particular the bit after you select/format a disk, where it starts to copy large numbers of files before the GUI section kicks in. Unfortunately I can't find this guide anymore.

Does anyone know how to trim and speed up the DOS part of the installation? Guide would be good! Thanks!

[subassy]

Possibly you can't find it in the guide because that text-mode of the setup is not DOS or in any way shape or from related to DOS. It more referred to as the "text mode" or "text setup".

Not sure you can do anything to make it go faster. Get a faster CD drive maybe? All the files that are copied over are listed in the txtsetup.sif file so you could do a search on this file and see if there are any adjustments you could make that way (but I've never tried adjusting this file so don't quote me).

[neo]

Possibly you can't find it in the guide because that text-mode of the setup is not DOS or in any way shape or from related to DOS. It more referred to as the "text mode" or "text setup".

Not sure you can do anything to make it go faster. Get a faster CD drive maybe? All the files that are copied over are listed in the txtsetup.sif file so you could do a search on this file and see if there are any adjustments you could make that way (but I've never tried adjusting this file so don't quote me).

Right said !!!

You can use nLite and remove unneeded components, it edit txtsetup.sif and remove the files too.

It may speedup your text mode installation.

[heffalump]

Thanks guys. Text mode it is! I found the guide It's actually here on MSFN lol

http://www.msfn.org/board/Forgotten-Setup-...ed-t106964.html

Just what I was looking for

[JoeMSFN]

Note: this works only if the computer you're setting up doesn't include RAID.

Plug the hard drive from the computer onto which you're installing windows into an already setup PC.

Blank it and format it. Note it's drive letter, etc.

Run the winnt32 setup with various parameters to redirect the install to that drive.

Attach the drive to the computer you're installing, then boot.

Textmode flies!!!!

This works great as long as you aren't using RAID, also some laptops don't like booting off the drive that way and seem to need to have windows installed on them while they are in the laptop.

The extra steps may or may not help. I've started using a Win/BartPE setup to do the winnt32 step through a network. I got sick of having to prune my DVD sized install source for some laptops with only a CD drive.

Doing winnt32 through a network part does make installing from CD's text mode seem fast.

[bj-kaiser]

well, you can do some tricks and replace the text mode setup with WinPE and imagex, and it will even work with RAID/SATA-Controllers in native mode. The trick here is sysprep and peimg.exe.

you can make peimg believe the XP image is a PE image easily, which makes it possible to integrate disk drivers into the offline image. However, it is probably not supported, but for me it works.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

You can burn the image onto a DVD instead of a CD, it loads much faster. Downside is you're going to need a DVD reader (obviously) and you're going to waste quite a bit of space.