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How-To: Install from HDD without FAT->NTFS or Bootdisks/CDs!


Falcon4

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*deep sigh*

That was a huge fiasco. Merging nLite's files with what winnt32 created? Disaster!

Here is, finally, after countless failures and changes (thank god for IDE hotplugging in WinXP), how to make Windows Setup boot - just like it boots from the CD - from the hard drive itself.

Prerequisites:

- "Manual Install and Upgrade" kept

- A hard drive. Period. No CD or floppy needed (as the system I was doing this on had no CD, floppy, network, or USB-boot).

Start by completing your nLitened version. This method works 100% with your nLitened versions - but Unattended is slightly broken in the textmode portion. It still comes up with "Welcome to Setup" and a few other screens. During setup under FullUnattended, it still asks for date/time, which was unexpected but I don't know if that's normal or not.

Once you have your nLitened version ready, pre-format your destination drive (obviously can't be your main drive, C).

Run this command (from Run) - where {nLite} is your nLited output folder, {drive} is like D, F, M, etc... whatever drive letter your destination drive is:

{nLite}\i386\winnt32.exe /syspart:{drive} /tempdrive:{drive} /noreboot

Fill it out with your details, whatever... not completely necessary since you'll be editing that file in a minute, but it's the only way to satisfy Setup to get to the next step. Setup will copy your source nLite files to special folders on the destination drive, write the boot sector to the drive, set it active, and otherwise bootable.

In somewhat technical theory, the drive's ready to roll. But if you stop here, your drive will install as drive D:, F:, M:, or whatever it was when you set it up! Nobody likes a F:\Windows. So continue on to fix this irritating oversight of Microsoft's and integrate parts of your nLite Unattended setup!

Open {drive}\$WIN_NT$.~BT\WINNT.SIF

Open {nLite}\i386\WINNT.SIF

In the drive's WINNT.SIF file will be several fewer lines than the nLite folder's file. Merge the two together by comparing sections. Add the sections that aren't there and take lines from sections that match and put them into the drive's file.

Example:

{nLite}

[section]
this=that
cool=yes
ultra="mega lolness!"
falcon4=awesome
[anothersection]
extreme="true"

{drive}

[section]
cool=yes
OriTyp="3"
EulaComplete="1"
winntupgrade="no"
win9xupgrade="no"

Final drive file:

{drive}

[section]
cool=yes
OriTyp="3"
EulaComplete="1"
winntupgrade="no"
win9xupgrade="no"
this=that
ultra="mega lolness!"
falcon4=awesome
[anothersection]
extreme="true"

Note that I tool the original {drive} file and added the contents of the {nLite} file without duplicating them.

IMPORTANT!!! Now, find the line OriSrc in the {drive} file. It will currently match the original location you copied the files from - your nLite folder. This will not work in the new system! Change it to be "C:\$WIN_NT$.~LS\", exactly. Unless you're certain your resulting drive letter will be something other than C, which we're working to avoid here. Once your OriSrc line is like so:

OriSrc="C:\$WIN_NT$.~LS\"

Save the Drive's WINNT.SIF file and close it. Delete the {drive}$WIN_NT$.~BT\MIGRATE.INF file. It contains data that will set your drive letter to the old letter (what you did above is the workaround for the problem that doing this produces).

Remove the drive, boot it up, and you're... *taco bell pose* Good to go! :thumbup

Enjoy!

Edited by Falcon4
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wooohooooo ;-)

nice one! I was searching for something like that because I own a small embedded PC where I wanted to install Windows ...

I guess this method works both for Win2k and WinXP?

Preformat the hdd in ntfs right?

This is really cool *bookmark and copy to txt file* ;-)

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Yeah, preformat as NTFS. Or you can use FAT32 but that kinda defeats the purpose.

I'm not sure if it'll work the same way with Win2K's winnt32.exe, but it's always worth a shot... I think I copied those switches from the Win2K switches page, so it should work. It won't work with WinNT though, since that was a 100% DOS-mode installation with NTFS conversion anyway.

It might also make USB drives boot... maybe! :P

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(thank god for IDE hotplugging in WinXP)

Not sure I agree with that. Can you tell us where you got this info?

Hotplugging/swapping only applies to sata, usb and firewire as far as I know.

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Install a drive:

Plug it in, hit "Scan for hardware changes" in Device Manager. Drive is found and installed.

Remove a drive:

Remove the drive from Device Manager, and provided you didn't get a "restart your computer" dialog, it's safe to unplug.

Isn't that hotplugging? :lol:

Edited by Falcon4
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It won`t boot for me, says no operating system found... Posible cause for this? Thanks for the post i was searching for this some time. I have a pc that will not boot from floppy or cd rom. This is the only way i can install xp, but i follow all directions and no progress at all.... Can you help please?

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Install a drive:

Plug it in, hit "Scan for hardware changes" in Device Manager. Drive is found and installed.

Remove a drive:

Remove the drive from Device Manager, and provided you didn't get a "restart your computer" dialog, it's safe to unplug.

Isn't that hotplugging? :lol:

yes that is but its not recommended or approved by ms or hard drive manufacturers

show me diff and ill shut up and say i was wrong

worst case scenario would be blowing your motherboard so beware

(i have done it by mistake in the past thinking i had shut down and promplty crashed or blue screened...forget which)

edit: just remembered -> hell just last week i took a risk and plugged in the power cord to the floppy drive and same thing happened

perhaps your motherboard has some safety features that not everyone has

Edited by -X-
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-X-: Oh, hell, of course it's not supported! This whole method isn't supported, nLite isn't supported, nothing's supported... we're the rebels. If it works, great... if not, don't complain! B)

Also, the drive I was working with was a 5v laptop hard drive into a laptop... those are pretty cool about the power thing. 95% of the problems with hot-plugging IDE are from the power drop caused by plugging the new hard drive in, which knocks the other drive(s) out for a split second, just long enough to reset the bus and make the drives unusable until a reboot. IMO this should be easy enough to work around at the driver level, but MS doesn't support this. Simple solution is to plug into a non-critical power cable (one with CD drives on it, for example) and hope for the best. :)

djnando: What's your setup? After you ran winnt32 with the switches, what did you get? I got a message about not being able to upgrade this version of Windows, chose New Installation, entered my CD-key, left the rest of the options default, then it proceeded to "Copying installation files" and closed. Be sure you entered the right drive letter, the drive you chose is the active and primary partiiton on the drive, and that the drive is properly formatted. Usually "Operating system not found" occurs when you have the wrong drive selected, or it's not properly formatted.

Edited by Falcon4
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-X-: Oh, hell, of course it's not supported! This whole method isn't supported, nLite isn't supported, nothing's supported... we're the rebels. If it works, great... if not, don't complain! B)

theres a HUGE diff between doing something unsupported with software and doing something unsupported with hardware

software, u just reinstall

hardware, u have to go buy new parts if they get damaged

since you have failed to show how this is safe, i am warning everyone again....

DO NOT PLUG OR UNPLUG ANYTHING ON YOUR COMPUTER WHILE IT IS RUNNING UNLESS ITS A USB DEVICE, A SATA DEVICE OR A FIREWIRE DEVICE

DOING SO WILL RISK DAMAGING YOUR HARDWARE

Edited by -X-
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djnando: What's your setup? After you ran winnt32 with the switches, what did you get? I got a message about not being able to upgrade this version of Windows, chose New Installation, entered my CD-key, left the rest of the options default, then it proceeded to "Copying installation files" and closed. Be sure you entered the right drive letter, the drive you chose is the active and primary partiiton on the drive, and that the drive is properly formatted. Usually "Operating system not found" occurs when you have the wrong drive selected, or it's not properly formatted.

Everything is fine, drive letter fine, it finished copying files ans closed.

Steps I take:

- Formated drive as ntfs

- Run winnt32.exe with the rigth switches and drive letter.

- Edited Winnt.sif

- Deleted Migrate.inf

- Connected HD in the destination PC, but will not boot, maybe is that there is no boot sector?

Thanks :thumbup in advance. djnando

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DO NOT PLUG OR UNPLUG ANYTHING ON YOUR COMPUTER WHILE IT IS RUNNING UNLESS ITS A USB DEVICE, A SATA DEVICE OR A FIREWIRE DEVICE

DOING SO WILL RISK DAMAGING YOUR HARDWARE

Good disclaimer, bad tweaker advice though... but I do agree none the less. If you don't know what you're doing or why it would/wouldn't work, and are worried about your data, don't screw with it. It's not possible to blow out a controller or motherboard by doing this, but you VERY WELL CAN accidentally slip a pin on the power connector (as I've done several times) and very likely blow out your hard drive by crossing the positive and negative across the two negative pins. Molex is a really shoddy standard IMO... :P

djnando: Strange, the switches are supposed to set the drive active and everything... it may be that the drive geometry or controller setup of your source computer may not match the destination computer... in which case you might want to try Googling around (or asking around... anyone?) for a way to get around this limitation. Usually the symptoms of this are a corrupted screen and a whole lockup (reading from the wrong sector)... not just "operating system not found". Try booting your main computer from that destination drive, and see if it comes up with the same problem.

You may also try removing your main hard drive, "faking" a Setup from the original Windows CD onto the destination drive to set it up exactly how it wants it, then after file-copying is complete in textmode, put your main hard drive back in and booting it, then reformatting the destination drive and trying it again. It should work this time - if it doesn't, it's DEFINITELY a geometry/controller mismatch between the computers.

CptMurphy: Actually this method is designed for systems that are stuck between a "rock and a hard place". If you have no CD drives for that computer but you can pull the drive out and use it elsewhere (e.g. ghetto setups, or systems with odd specs). I don't know about "hot swappable" hard drives... what I was referring to was me, personally, being able to insert and remove my destination drive countless times while figuring out and building this guide. I do not mean to - and never did - tell people to remove their drive while the computer was running. Hope I didn't confuse too many people with that short phrase... if it did, I'll take it out.

edit: Eyy, boooggy!! Nice to see you reading my guide! I used your update pack (as usual)! LOL! Nice work :D

Edited by Falcon4
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  • 2 weeks later...

It still asks me to insert the XP cd. I also tried with the "/makelocalsource" switch but I still can't install XP from HDD. Also is it normal that the I386 folder contains 3100 files instead of 3900 in my nLite folder ?

I did merge the Winnt.sif, I did correct the source line and I did delete the migrate.sif.

Edited: I corrected my Winnt.sif where I had a line Msdosinitiated=0 and one msdosinitiated=1. Kept the 1 and now I'm in an install loop. First after boot it will ask me what partition to install, copy files to it then reboot and reask me ! Then say it cannot control C drive or my files are corrupted.

Edited 2: if after 2nd reboot I replace the ntldr that is 255k by the normal one that is 245k (on all other bootable partitions of this comp), it works. What can be the reason that it is not updated in between ?

Edited by Ponch
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