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Windows XP installation from a USB external drive

Rhadamanthys
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Rhadamanthys

Rhadamanthys

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Posted

Hello everyone

I´m new to this forum and to the "unattended windows" installation world & desperately need to know how to install Windows XP from an external drive.

Allow me to give details

Not too long ago, I got myself a copy of Windows XP Black Edition USA retail edition, used it & think its the best thing since sliced bread. Its basically an unattended XP install LOADED with programs - a 4.4Gig dvd.

I also own an 20Gig (FAT32) MP3 player that plugs in via USB & is recognized immediately as an external HDD. Now considering that I´m never about to put 20 Gigs of MP3s on the player, what I want to do is make the player bootable with the black edition image, so that I can install XP from the disk & not have to bother with the DVD anymore

I realise there are many many MANY threads with similar questions & all the replies seem to mention like 5 OTHER reference threads. I´ve been "trying" to keep a level head & go through these, but I only end up with 10 windows open, with no clue where I started & realise I´m reading about how to boot a preinstalled version of windows from a flash drive; this is NOT what I want & I dont know why the references made by people who ask something similar to what I did get sent to that....

I finally saw a message saying that there isnt a guide out there because there isnt a one size fits all solution. My question is - can anyone let me know how I may go about burning an Unattended Windows XP black edition bootable DVD image to a USB external drive so that I boot from the drive & the installation process begins just like it does with the DVD (& yes my BIOS supports boot via external device...)

I would be indebted to you if someone can help me with details in this thread itself or a pre-existing thread that gives me the solution & not 20 other links. I´ve been going dizzy trying to get to the bottom of this.....

Thanks in advance

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Sgt_Strider

Sgt_Strider

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Hello everyone

I´m new to this forum and to the "unattended windows" installation world & desperately need to know how to install Windows XP from an external drive.

Allow me to give details

Not too long ago, I got myself a copy of Windows XP Black Edition USA retail edition, used it & think its the best thing since sliced bread. Its basically an unattended XP install LOADED with programs - a 4.4Gig dvd.

I also own an 20Gig (FAT32) MP3 player that plugs in via USB & is recognized immediately as an external HDD. Now considering that I´m never about to put 20 Gigs of MP3s on the player, what I want to do is make the player bootable with the black edition image, so that I can install XP from the disk & not have to bother with the DVD anymore

I realise there are many many MANY threads with similar questions & all the replies seem to mention like 5 OTHER reference threads. I´ve been "trying" to keep a level head & go through these, but I only end up with 10 windows open, with no clue where I started & realise I´m reading about how to boot a preinstalled version of windows from a flash drive; this is NOT what I want & I dont know why the references made by people who ask something similar to what I did get sent to that....

I finally saw a message saying that there isnt a guide out there because there isnt a one size fits all solution. My question is - can anyone let me know how I may go about burning an Unattended Windows XP black edition bootable DVD image to a USB external drive so that I boot from the drive & the installation process begins just like it does with the DVD (& yes my BIOS supports boot via external device...)

I would be indebted to you if someone can help me with details in this thread itself or a pre-existing thread that gives me the solution & not 20 other links. I´ve been going dizzy trying to get to the bottom of this.....

Thanks in advance

LOL, there is no such thing as a Windows XP Black Edition retail edition. Nice try with the words there, but we're not stupid.

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jaclaz

jaclaz

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@Rhadamanthys

Take it easy, mate. :)

ANY Microsoft OS that does not come from Microsoft's own servers, from an authorized re-seller or OEM is WAREZ.

And here at MSFN we have some rules, here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=18408

of which the interesting one is #1:

1. This is not a warez site! Links/Requests to warez and/or illegal material (porn, cracks, serials, etc..) will not be tolerated. Discussion of circumventing WGA/activation/timebombs/keygens or any other illegal activity will also not be tolerated. You will be banned without notice.

Now, as no one likes being banned, this kind of topics are NOT welcome.

I trust you on your word that you might not have realized that Windows XP is Copyrighted material, as said in the first result for your given search link:

Using BitTorrent is legal, downloading copyrighted material isn’t.

but you won't get any help here in using/installing a pirated OS.

jaclaz

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DisabledTrucker

DisabledTrucker

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Well, I am running a Windows "GOLD" installation from DVD now and have, albeit unsuccessfully thus far, been trying to get it to run from a SanDisk Cruizer. I'll list what all I have tried thus far and see if someone can help me out in attempting to get it to work this way, my perferred method. First though I have a few questions about the WinPE way:

1. How does this WinPE way work exactly, from what I understand of WinPE, WinPE is basically a stripped down operating system based off of your WinXP disk. So how exactly does that allow me to install a fully working version of it?

2. Besides BartPE being a non-Microsoft way of creating the WinPE, what other differences are there, outside of the ugly boot screen? Can't I just build WinPE and do the same things as what BartPE does and be 100% Microsoft?

3. What's stopping me from just building the installation as I would if I were going to install it from the HDD, using SetupMGR, and going that route, instead of having to learn how to build the WinPE? Will it not work that way?

I've been researching this for a few weeks straight now and every result of my search was either vauge with what they were talking about, such as using the words "install" and "run" interchangably, which makes things even more confusing, or speaking too generally on what they were doing. My main concern here with this anyways is that I don't care about being able to "RUN" Windows XP from a USB key, I want to "INSTALL" Windows XP from a USB key.

What I have tried to do thus far:

1. I first found out that my SanDisk Cruizer, (once I removed all that crapware they put on it,) boots as a USB HDD drive on my MSI Diamond Plus. After that I tried formatting it first to FAT32 with HP's USB Disk Formatter Tool, which allowed me to install Win98 boot disk on it, and put the boot files for me. This method didn't work at all. I was able to get this method to work to an extent using my Lexar key which is only 256MB, which is way too small for what I need, but then it would error out on the RAMDISK settings and wouldn't let me do much with Win98 at all, and definately couldn't call the Windows XP setup either. (I'm not interested in using this as an Unattended install using WinNT.SIF at this point, I want it to install without using that method, I have a need for this to work without doing it that way.)

2. I reformatted it again with HP's USB Disk Formatter Tool, to NTFS, which I had to manually put on the boot files. I attempted this by:

a: Taking the files from my HDD and putting them on there, (This method didn't work at all.)

b: Taking the files from a downloaded copy of them on the net, which allows me to at least see the drive boot, but doesn't get any farther.

c: Taking the files from i386 on my Windows Installation disk, which allows me to at least see the drive but also doesn't get any further.

3. I have tried modifing my boot.ini file so that it:

a: Boots to Windows, this errors out immediately and constantly reboots the machine.

b: Boots to i386, which throws up an error after you get past the O/S choices screen. (What O/S's is it seeing?)

c: Boots to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\setup.exe, this causes it to error 14 on TXTSETUP.SIF

d:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\i386\setup.exe *% = "Windows XP Installation Disk"

which will also errors out saying there is a problem with the hardware configuration and that it couldn't read from the disk hardware.

I've tried probably 100 different ways to get this to work thus far, and still am unsuccessful in doing so. Anyone with any ideas that I can try to get it working? I have included the files from the Bootable CD folder on the Windows XP disk in the root of the drive and that doesn't seem to matter at all. I have found that not using the NTLDR, etc files from the root of the HDD none of this will work at all, the problem is that it won't allow for me to use the AUTORUN to load it up when booting.

Does anyone know how one can change the MBR so that it thinks it's a USB CD? It would be better if I could just make it think it's a CD-RW and "burn" the ISO to it and run it that way. Has anyone figured out how to make this work yet? I'd even settle with creating the CDFS after I move the files there, but I've not been able to find out how the likes of SanDisk is able to create that partition anywhere. Can anyone point me in the right direction on that? I have search this exhaustively for that, for the past month or so now on that last point alone and still cannot find anything anywhere that allows me to do that. I know they are using two ISO files to create the two partitions but how they are doing it is tied into their installer which I can't get into to read. Somehow they are changing the MBR after they add those files to the key, but I can't find the information on how they are doing it. If anyone can shed some light on this, please do.

My key is 4GB, so using it as a floppy is out of the question, though if I can figure out how to modify the MBR during a "burn" without losing all the files on it or rebooting, I would just create the hidden partition for the "Bootable CD" files and leave the other partition open so that I can run setup from the rest of the key and modify it at will. The installer SanDisk has created for U3 doesn't allow one to modify the iso files it downloads from their site, at least not anymore, so building an ISO to do what I want and placing it with the installer file method doesn't work anymore. If someone can duplicate their installer and make it so that you can use the Bootable CD partition from the Windows operating systems and format the rest of the key for inclusion of the rest of the disk, (the part you see on the install disks,) one can easily use it to duplicate the Windows CD/DVD's and that would work.

Basically what one would have to do is create an ISO with the two files in that Bootable CD folder from a Windows operating system disk, add in an AUTORUN file that points to the setup.exe on the main partition and format the rest of the key so that it's usable as normal and that's all that is needed to make this method work, 99.99% of the time. You'd theorhetically have a USB CD-RW that way, and it would be bootable as well. In fact if a key manufacturer would do this from the factory, that would be perfect. They could create the keys with that "boot sector" already implanted into the key, so that if you were to format the key, it would still be bootable, and always been seen by the motherboards that recognise USB bootable devices as a USB Floppy. The rest of the drive would still be seen as either a removable drive or a HDD, but either will work for this. Even if they coded it so that it called only Setup.exe from the bootable partition, that would be sufficient for the vast majority of projects that one would like to have autorun from the main section. Or for that matter, have that Autorun call either Autoexec.bat or another Autorun.ini from the other partition for modification purposes that should fit everyones sitituations. In fact if SanDisk did that instead of how they are doing their U3 drives now, they wouldn't have as many complaints about people not being able to get rid of that partition as it would at least be usable to them. One could always format the drive and never have to worry about losing that partition and it should even be able to be see by a Mac as well, so it would be 100% compatible with the majority of computers on the market, if not all of them. But hey I'm rambling now and will stop here. Please someone help us figure out how to get this method working though, don't just discard it because someone may have mentioned that they are using a warez version of the operating system, as there are others of us who are looking for this information as well that have legal versions of it and want to do the same thing.

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lic

lic

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I find this an interresting topic. Because using USB probably solves my problem of lookin for a way to change product keys and computernames by having the ability to change the winnt.sif file. That way it's not an AFTER installation action but I can just change it BEFORE installation.

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lic

lic

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Anyone tried it? Possible unattended enhancements?

I will be giving this a try today... Preparing an USB harddisk as we speak! Post the result later...

Thanx for the link. :thumbup

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