Installing XP from USB Drive

Caporegime
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Dormanstown.
Hey there, I've a netbook that I've to reformat and I've left it for a while.
I have no external DVD Drive, and unfortunately this netbook has no DVD Drive.

I've ripped the ISO from the Windows XP Home Edition disc, however how can I install via USB Drive?

If this was Windows 7, I could do it from inside Windows, and it'd continue as a regular install, XP however is stupid, and won't =/.
 
Caporegime
OP
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Dormanstown.
is the iso boot set and dose the laptop boot from usb

Yes notebook can boot from USB.
Unless, I can make my USB Drive bootable like in my tutorial, and then put the ISO on, but what would be the command to run it?

The way I do it is hammer F12 when turning on then it takes you to boot menu and select USB drive and boot from there?

Not the question I'm asking. How do I go about making the ISO work from the USB Drive?
 
Associate
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28 May 2011
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London
ooooh ok I googled it and it came up with this, is this more what you are after?

This operation assumes your machine can boot from a USB enabled device. Check your BIOS to make sure. You also MUST have a DVD copy of Vista to install the source files from the DVD to a USB flash drive:
1. Insert your USB flash drive and enter the following commands:
(please note this list assumes that your USB flash drive will be seen as disk 1. To confirm that it is type "list disk" after you've entered the DISKPART command) Otherwise you may wipe a different drive (such as your hard disk drive!)
2. Type:

diskpart
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
At this point your USB drive is formatted. DO NOT format the drive from within Windows. You MUST have a DVD copy of Vista to copy the source files from.

The final preparation step is to copy the installation files to your flash drive, this can be done by running the following command:
(Please note D: is the drive letter for the source files and E: is the drive letter for your flash drive, if they are different on your system you need to change them accordingly).
Exit DISKPART. Type:

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

Thats it, configure usb device as primary boot device in your bios and install.

It's vista but I'm assuming they work the same
 
Associate
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Location
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Now might be a time for Surveyor or Buchanan or Stulid or any of the others to come to this thread and shed some light because I'm a bit out of my depth.

I assumed Command Prompt but that could be totally wrong :(
 
Soldato
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25 Oct 2009
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Location
Northampton
Yup, the method that DJ found works fine.
its all done form the command prompt.

if you don't feel confident with xcopy commands then you can drag and drop the contents of the XP disk after formatting your drive as fat32.
 
Soldato
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17 Jan 2006
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Location
Dundee
Read this.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/120444-how-to-install-windows-from-usb-winsetupfromusb-with-gui/

Use this.

Very simple to do.

download WinSetup http://www.datafilehost.com/download-3c7ead6d.html

Run app to get this screen

1.JPG


Click browse to find the source files for the install (CD/DVD or extracted folder)

Click refresh to locate the flash drive you wish to use

Click RMPrepUSB to get this screen

2.JPG



Ensure options are same as above and select prepare drive.

After a couple of click ok boxes your will get this dos screen

3.JPG


Once this has finished all you do is click GO from image 1 and when things are finished copying your can then boot form the drive. you will need to boot from the drive twice , once for the DOS part and 2nd for the GUI parts. Install is very very quick.
 
Caporegime
OP
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30,097
Location
Dormanstown.
If you are talking about my method - you need to boot from the flash drive twice

1st time select the top option
2nd time select the 2nd option

Caught me out as well.

I did boot from USB twice.
First time = Text based for the formatting, copying of files.
Second time = Gui installation, it throws up an error half way through the white loading bar.
 
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