SilverBulletUK Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 Hey all,Wonder if you can help me. Ive created an unattended XP CD and would like to install it on to some computers ive made VIA the USB Hard Drive i have, is there a way to do this......?I want the computers (All support boot from USB ) to boot from the External Drive as if it was booting from the XP CD.I know how to make a bootable XP CD but not a way to make the USB drive....I making any sense? So...in a nut shell.......plug in USB HD....Boot from USB....Xp starts the install.I know that you have to get XP to load Mass Storage Device Drives at some point....but if anyone has seena guide somewhere it would be much appreciated... Thx All. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamehead200 Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 You should be able to install it the same way you would install it from a normal hard drive... I believe you would have to run winnt32.exe or winnt.exe at some point... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ripken204 Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 are u able to go into ur BIOS and say to boot from a hard drive then select the one from the usb. or to make it easier you can burn to info from the usb hard drive to disc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ripken204 Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 this might help but im not suregive it a lookLINK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverBulletUK Posted December 27, 2004 Author Share Posted December 27, 2004 Thanks all for the info, but im still not sure this is what im looking for....Ripken204 seemed to be closest to what i want but when i go to install using that method it at first run of the GUI setup it errors as WinXP setup cannot read from the drive....Im sure there should be a way to load Mass Storage Device drivers from the $oems$ path.......im probably really wrong...help me obi wan kenobi...your my only hope.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 the only way to install xp from a usb hard drive is that the bios must support that function or feature in your case boot from a usb device or boot from usb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverBulletUK Posted December 28, 2004 Author Share Posted December 28, 2004 :Bump: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aresgodofwar Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 what's there to bump? your bios has to support the feature, then it has to have the boot files on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverBulletUK Posted December 28, 2004 Author Share Posted December 28, 2004 The BIOS does support it as i said in my original post, the question is:How to make a USB hard drive bootable so it can install xp onto the host machine... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekrel Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 You would need to have it on the Hard disk obviously, and find out what drive letter is assigned to your USB hard disk.Then get a boot disk, and navigate to your USB hard drive, and then execute winnt.exe in the I386 folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albator Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 IF you bios doesn'T support boot from usb it impossible to do a fresh install. SO stop asking you have been answer before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekrel Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 He has already said on acouple of occasions, that his bios supports boot from USBI want the computers (All support boot from USB biggrin.gif ) to boot from the External Drive as if it was booting from the XP CD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverBulletUK Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 @ Albator: The computers DO support booting from USB, if you took the time to read the post properly before deciding to flame a new member maybe more people would actually sign up to the forum rather than use it as source of information (and a great one at that) and make MSFN even greater.But still....my question stands.Would it be possible to clone a Bootable Floppy disk that calls WINNT & the .SIF file from Autoexec.bat and implement that somehow onto the drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekrel Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 So you want to install from the EXTERNAL DRIVE, to a static internal drive?Read my post, just get a boot able floppy and browse to the external drive, locate the winnt.exe and execute it in the i386 folder and follow the instructions.Floppy boot image:ftp://ftp.fluidlight.com/pub/nospin_files/wxpboot.exe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stead Posted January 6, 2005 Share Posted January 6, 2005 hope i don't seem like the 'noob' i am at this forum but it seems to me that if you did get it working, windows wouldn't be able to install as the usb hd wouldn't be found again until windows has finished installing?i did get windows xp to install itself before, can't remember i just rea lots of stuff, anyways i had it so you put the hd in and it would install itself, i thought it was pretty neat praps you could use bart's PE builder to make a bootable portable windows on that drive, have a batch or just manually copy all the files over, then remove the usb drive and let the computer install itselfi suggested the bart pe as that would be able to read ntfs partitions!this method probably isn't the most conventional, but i'm guessing once its setup probably the simplest to run Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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