Install Windows XP from a HDD to the same HDD?

[Hackerman]

Hello friends!

I have a laptop that came with Windows XP and I want to reinstall Windows XP on it. Specifically, I want to do a clean install to get rid of the old and broken configuration, starting fresh with a clean slate.

It has two USB 1.1 ports but doesn't support booting from a UFD. It doesn't have a built-in FDD drive, but supports booting from a USB FDD drive by emulation, and it has legacy FDD support in the controller and BIOS, but no port for it (maybe it has some header for it that I missed, but no FDD port). It doesn't have a built-in CD-ROM drive, and it cannot boot from CD-ROM. It can install Windows XP from a CD, but only with a PCMCIA CD-ROM drive connected to one of the two PCMCIA slots (Type I and Type II supported), and only after loading the drivers... from a floppy. So again, it needs to boot from FDD drive. It can boot from PXE but I don't have the time or the will to go through the madness to set up my own PXE server for this. So basically, it can boot from FDD, IDE, and PXE.

I don't have the Recovery CD with Windows XP or the Drivers & Utilities disc. But I have found the boot disk creation software from the manufacturer's website, and it's basically a WinImage SFX EXE with embedded IMZ image. I have extracted it on Windows XP because it fails to execute on Windows 10, and I have extracted the IMZ and converted it to an IMG, and I have booted a Windows XP VM in VBox with it and it works fine there. But good luck writing that image out to a working floppy!

I took a gamble and purchased a USB FDD drive and two packs of ten 3.5" Fujifilm floppies. Not a single one worked without an error, usually erring at track 0 or 1 already, and sometimes at 30 through 50, about midway through the disk apparently. I did manage to write that image out to a Sony floppy I had in my archive, without any error, but when WinImage went on to verify it, it failed at about track 20. So as expected, I wasn't able to boot off of that. I did find an old Fujifilm boot disk that I managed to boot from, but it appears to have been created in Windows XP and it doesn't contain FDISK. I don't think I can use this to boot and start the Windows XP installation from IDE HDD?

So my big question is, can I use a single IDE HDD to both store the Windows XP installation files on and install Windows XP on? The HDD is 40 GB, so it has plenty of space. I know I can partition it externally, but can I make it bootable?

I would like to have a 1 GB FAT32 partition to store the Windows XP files on at 30 GB offset, and a 100 MB FAT partition at 31 GB offset to write the boot floppy image to. I would then like to boot that single IDE HDD from the 100 MB partition as if it were my floppy disk, use FDISK if I need to and run the Windows XP setup from the i386 folder on the 1 GB partition. During setup, I can convert to NTFS for the main partition that Windows XP will install to at the beginning of the HDD. Is this possible and what tools do I need?

I recently installed Windows XP alongside the old Windows XP installation, by running the setup from the USB CD-ROM, from within the old but working Windows XP installation. I now have both on the bootloader menu so I can select between them during startup. So I know it is possible to do what I'm asking. I just would like to know how I can do it manually myself, and in case I don't have any working Windows XP on the HDD to start from, where I only have a clean HDD.

You may suggest a better and easier method if you know one. Thanks in advance!

 

[j7n]

You can install Windows from HDD using WinNTSetup from within a functional copy of Windows (including booted mini-XP from CD). But you need to find an older version of it because the developer has abandoned old versions of Windows. It basically replaces the first part of setup and sets up boot .ini to boot into the newly copied files. If you have no partitions, there will be a bit of a challenge. Put the new Windows into a different directory like \winnt with nLite. Then you can still revert to the existing Windows from the boot .ini menu (set a few seconds timeout). If that goes wrong, your system becomes bricked without a means of booting from an emergency CD.

If you partition and format the disk, you have no Windows anymore at that point.

[Hackerman]

Thanks for the reply! There is a lot for me to unpack here...

6 hours ago, j7n said:

But you need to find an older version of it because the developer has abandoned old versions of Windows.

By old versions you mean Windows XP? What was the last version of WinNTSetup to work with Windows XP? I understand if you don't know the exact version number, but knowing this would shorten my to-do list and I would appreciate that.

Also, is this the software you mention?

https://msfn.org/board/topic/149612-winntsetup-v5352/

6 hours ago, j7n said:

It basically replaces the first part of setup and sets up boot .ini to boot into the newly copied files.

It replaces what exactly? Can you expand on this please? Where will the newly copied files be stored? Where are they copied from?

6 hours ago, j7n said:

If you have no partitions, there will be a bit of a challenge. Put the new Windows into a different directory like \winnt with nLite. Then you can still revert to the existing Windows from the boot .ini menu (set a few seconds timeout).

In case of a clean HDD you mean? I can of course do all the preparation with the HDD removed and plugged into a second computer with a working OS, even if it's not Windows XP. Can you expand on the bits about nLite and the \winnt dir? Isn't nLite only used for creating customized ISO files? I have maybe used this once or twice many years ago, so I'm not that familiar with it, and I fail to see the relevance in this case.

6 hours ago, j7n said:

If that goes wrong, your system becomes bricked without a means of booting from an emergency CD.

Because I can't boot from a CD-ROM you mean? Yes, that would not be ideal. But like I said, I can always remove the HDD and do all the work necessary in a second computer. I have also imaged the original HDD so I can restore to previous state.

6 hours ago, j7n said:

If you partition and format the disk, you have no Windows anymore at that point.

Yes, that's what I'm most curious about. How do you do it then? You can't use WinNTSetup in that case, can you? There is nothing to boot from. The HDD is clean: no partition table, no partitions, no file systems. Booting from USB FDD drive is not possible, because all floppies are degraded and unreadable. There is no PXE server for network boot. And booting from UFD is not supported by BIOS.

Can the HDD be prepared outside the laptop, in the second computer? Without a working Windows XP installation?

Edited July 6 by Hackerman

[j7n]

That is the software. I don't know the last version because I keep using what I got already: 2.2.1.1 works and 3.8.6 works with a bunch of dependencies. It takes files from a Windows CD or ISO and will copy them to the system drive, which normally happens during the blue text-mode setup. When the computer is rebooted, these new files will run and continue setup. At that time it is a parallel installation of Windows.

Yes, nLite for customizing Windows installation. If needed, you can integrate disk controller drivers. One option it offers is another folder where Windows will be put. I mention this because if the new OS doesn't work, you can still keep your old one (in \windows) and try another way. There are other ways to specify the directory, and you can use those instead. WinNTSetup also offers an option to set the directory (windir @ ... ). It might work ok, but I don't remember if I've used it.

If you have already wiped the HDD and have no OS, then you can't use this method. It would not result in a perfectly clean installation because the old Windows would remain to be deleted later.

I have used WinNTSetup to install one laptop, and a couple other times.

[Roving]

This has gotten kind of complicated, but one thing caught my eye, about boot partitions and all that. Usually the primary partition "C" is where the OS is installed, I haven't experimented with multiple os in the same drive so can't comment on that, but my impression is that you can only have one bootable partition on a drive, so if you wanted to put in a second one, you'd have to make the first one not be bootable anymore. As I recall, I've read of making a small bootable partition when there is more than one os, which has a menu of options and acts as the boot manager so you can pick which one you want to run, with each os having its own partition. If you wanted to try that, you would have to use a partition manager to move the existing XP installation into its own partition away from C, and obviously shrink the old boot partition to just what you need for your boot manager, create a third partition or however you want to do it, for the new XP installation and go from there. You should look up boot managers for more information. Apparently XP actually has its own boot manager, but is only included in the Pro version. I think I actually used it myself, but I've forgotten the details. Try here to start: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/windows-xp-in/0596002491/re54.html