Unattended install using USB Flash Drive

[techxp]

I need to perform an unattended install of Windows XP on computers that have USB 2.0 ports and do NOT have DVD/CD ROM drives.

I have 4GB USB Flash Drives and the contents of the entire unattended XP will fit on the device.

Does anyone have detailed instructions and utilities for making the USB Flash Hard Drive bootable (with master boot record) and the required smarts to invoke the unattended install from the device to the internal IDE hard drive?

An approach based solely on using Windows and not linux is preferred.

Thanks

P.S. This topic is about using the Flash Drive as the installation point and NOT about installing Windows XP onto a Flash Drive.

P.S. I know that RIS is another option, but would like to explore bootable USB Flash Drives.

Edited November 18, 2005 by techxp

[RayOK]

Hmm.. I can think of three things..

1 - if the mobo allows bootable usb devices and you simply boot from the usb drive

2 - if the computers have a standard floppy disk, then check out this site for a start to dos usb drivers

3 - if the mobo recognizes a usb floppy drive as a standard floppy? then you could use #2

Just getting into theories here. I have no experience with booting or installing from usb

[RogueSpear]

Perhaps this article from Tom's Hardware could help a little.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050909/index.html

[druiddk]

Hmm Im also looking into this... I guess someone should try to put something together

[iranthavan]

may be i am relavent but check this article they saying how to make a thumb drive bootable from there any1 can play around find a solution?

[druiddk]

I think its not possible to use over 2GB of the space on the flashdrive because of the FAT design?

[RogueSpear]

Just format it with FAT32.

[Anderz]

Hmmm ... I'm curious about this myself . A thought - maybe you can:

1. format the drives as a MS-DOS startup disk (right-click the usb-stick and choose format, cross the option for formating as a startupdisk - which is in fact a Windows ME startup disk).

2. Copy all files (OS + extras AND winnt.sif)

3. Run the installation from commandline. Create a .bat file which runs the installation and points to the .sif file.

Could this work? Are there any better methods? Or what?

[druiddk]

I have not got a large USB stick yet so I have been yet to try this, but on another post a guy recomended HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hp...load/20306.html

[jaclaz]

Don't want to seem rude or anything like that, but you really should search:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61049

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61384

You see, if everyone comes here and starts a new thread, good (and bad) info will be scattered around, if we try our best to keep a small number of active threads it will be easier to find them and the infos are kept together.

jaclaz