I've bought a 1 gig flashdisk, and my DVD-ROM reads CDs so badly. So I'm wondering whether the Windows XP can be installed form the flashdisk directly like the installation from a CD. ( I do know how to make the flashdisk boot to DOS and then install the operating system form that environment, however, I don't know how to make the flashdisk to be alike a Windows XP install CD which can install the XP directly without any other systems' support.) Thanks very much!

Please NOW in Microsoft Windows XP section, use [TAGS] in your topic's title.

See rules.

--Sonic

Edited February 5, 200620 yr by Sonic

I've bought a 1 gig flashdisk, and my DVD-ROM reads CDs so badly. So I'm wondering whether the Windows XP can be installed form the flashdisk directly like the installation from a CD. ( I do know how to make the flashdisk boot to DOS and then install the operating system form that environment, however, I don't know how to make the flashdisk to be alike a Windows XP install CD which can install the XP directly without any other systems' support.) Thanks very much!

not unless dos provides the option to boot from drive E:, and i believe this question was asked before

Edited February 5, 200620 yr by wolf74481

I've bought a 1 gig flashdisk, and my DVD-ROM reads CDs so badly. So I'm wondering whether the Windows XP can be installed form the flashdisk directly like the installation from a CD. ( I do know how to make the flashdisk boot to DOS and then install the operating system form that environment, however, I don't know how to make the flashdisk to be alike a Windows XP install CD which can install the XP directly without any other systems' support.) Thanks very much!

not unless dos provides the option to boot from drive E:, and i believe this question was asked before

Thanks. I searched the forum but found nothing. And my purpose is to install the XP without any other systems' support such as dos or win pe. dos cannot recoganize the ntfs partition and the installation from dos will copy files to the boot partition first, so i cannot format that partition during the installation. but the installation from the cd can do this.

It is possible, under the condition:

- The BIOS mounts USB storage devices and can emulate them as HDDs completely (so that programs cannot distinguish between a real hard drive and a mounted USB device).

- The BIOS can boot from USB storage devices in the same way a normal hard disk can.

- The BIOS hides the fact that a USB storage device is attached on the USB port.

Otherwise, it cannot be possible; if the emulation provided by the BIOS is partial, you may be able to enter the Setup, but on device detection it finds the USB device and attempts to initialise it, which will cause errors.

Please NOW in Microsoft Windows XP section, use [TAGS] in your topic's title.

See rules.

--Sonic

I'm sorry for my disregard to the rules and thanks for your correction!

It is possible, under the condition:

- The BIOS mounts USB storage devices and can emulate them as HDDs completely (so that programs cannot distinguish between a real hard drive and a mounted USB device).

- The BIOS can boot from USB storage devices in the same way a normal hard disk can.

- The BIOS hides the fact that a USB storage device is attached on the USB port.

Otherwise, it cannot be possible; if the emulation provided by the BIOS is partial, you may be able to enter the Setup, but on device detection it finds the USB device and attempts to initialise it, which will cause errors.

My computer can recognize the USB storage devices as HDDs and this is just verified to be true. The problem confusing me now is that how can I make the computer boot from the very boot file (a special file on Windows XP/2000 setup CD-ROM). This boot file will lead the installation procedure to the hardware inspection stage directly. And this mode, like the installtion from the standard setup CD-ROM, will make the NTFS partitions operatable, such as formating or deletion. The disk and partition configurations are prior to the files copying stage.

My computer can recognize the USB storage devices as HDDs and this is just verified to be true. The problem confusing me now is that how can I make the computer boot from the very boot file (a special file on Windows XP/2000 setup CD-ROM). This boot file will lead the installation procedure to the hardware inspection stage directly. And this mode, like the installtion from the standard setup CD-ROM, will make the NTFS partitions operatable, such as formating or deletion. The disk and partition configurations are prior to the files copying stage.

I think you mean the "boot sector", which is one 2048-byte sector on the CD, not accessible as a file. It's loaded into memory and executed by the BIOS when the CD is booted, and it loads SETUPLDR.BIN from the I386 directory and executes that.

Hard disks (or emulated USB drives) have 512-byte sectors and use FAT16/32 filesystems, while CD-ROMs have 2048-byte sectors and use the ISO-9660 filesystem. The standard boot sector on the CD is written to understand ISO9660 FS, while hard disk boot sectors understand FAT16/32. However, it is possible to perform the same function, namely loading SETUPLDR.BIN from I386 directory.

You're going to have to write your own boot sector to do that... and do it in less than 512 bytes.

With the introduction od Windows 2003 SP1. Microsoft introduced the ability to boot to WinPE from a USB Drive. I don't think it would be too hard to change the bootloader to pass control over to setupldr.bin.

My computer can recognize the USB storage devices as HDDs and this is just verified to be true. The problem confusing me now is that how can I make the computer boot from the very boot file (a special file on Windows XP/2000 setup CD-ROM). This boot file will lead the installation procedure to the hardware inspection stage directly. And this mode, like the installtion from the standard setup CD-ROM, will make the NTFS partitions operatable, such as formating or deletion. The disk and partition configurations are prior to the files copying stage.

I think you mean the "boot sector", which is one 2048-byte sector on the CD, not accessible as a file. It's loaded into memory and executed by the BIOS when the CD is booted, and it loads SETUPLDR.BIN from the I386 directory and executes that.

Hard disks (or emulated USB drives) have 512-byte sectors and use FAT16/32 filesystems, while CD-ROMs have 2048-byte sectors and use the ISO-9660 filesystem. The standard boot sector on the CD is written to understand ISO9660 FS, while hard disk boot sectors understand FAT16/32. However, it is possible to perform the same function, namely loading SETUPLDR.BIN from I386 directory.

You're going to have to write your own boot sector to do that... and do it in less than 512 bytes.

Oh yes, that's what I want. But I don't know how to do it.

Can anybody help me? I don't know how to edit the boot sector. Thanks!