How to install XP on a computer with no disk drive

almoststew1990 · 17 Jul 2013 at 15:45

Hi all.

I am trying to install xp on a computer with no disk drive as I dont have any IDE drives hanging around anymore! In the bios, it gives the option to boot from USB. I have an xp disk and a computer with a dvd drive to hand, so it must be possible to get XP onto this machine..

So far i have tried Win to Flash on a 1GB usb stick but when i set the computer to boot from USB HDD (or USB FDD or USB CDROM) it simply says NTLDR is missing, please restart.

So now I'm at a loss! What is the best way to get XP onto a machine using a USB stick?

Deleted member 77746 · 17 Jul 2013 at 15:48

Why XP ? Use something like Ubuntu live CD or something ?

maddness · 17 Jul 2013 at 16:01

Im sure there is a xp pe or something thats allows you to run xp from usb

Edit:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-pocket,1113.html

andicole0 · 17 Jul 2013 at 16:07

This will probably be to do with the format on the USB drive or maybe the ability of the BIOS to read certain disk types (AHCI).

I'd go Googling if I were you, but then I wouldn't be trying to do that with XP :-)

Andi.

tribz · 17 Jul 2013 at 16:47

It doesnt help you straight away unfortunately but these are brilliant. Copy all your ISO's to them and it will see the selected ISO at boot as a bootable CD/DVD.

http://www.zalman.com/global/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=673

linktoinsanity · 17 Jul 2013 at 16:59

Download YUMI from here: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

And follow the onscreen instructions.

Confused · 17 Jul 2013 at 17:23

Do you want to create a USB stick you can boot from, to install XP onto a hard drive.

Or, do you want to install XP onto a USB drive?

The first is relatively easy - the second - pretty difficult.

Deleted member 77746 · 17 Jul 2013 at 17:33

almoststew1990 said:
I am trying to install xp on a computer with no disk drive

Confused said:
Do you want to create a USB stick you can boot from, to install XP onto a hard drive.

Or, do you want to install XP onto a USB drive?

Rroff · 17 Jul 2013 at 17:40

A lot of USB sticks will be horribly slow to use with Windows XP due to the way it works you will get a lot of pauses, etc. boot times will probably be incredibly slow (i.e. in the order of about 9 minutes with a ~2004 era 2GB USB stick) unless you have a fairly decent USB drive.

Also default Windows XP installation installs the USB drivers in the wrong order so you can't boot it from USB media (probably something addressed in the links above) when I did it I modified the installation files myself so that the USB drivers were loaded properly.

darael · 18 Jul 2013 at 00:16

If you want to XP from a USB stick, that's easy with a bit of Googling.

If you want to install XP onto a USB stick, I'd forget it personally. Even after the required effort, it will be so slow that it'll be unusable.

I'd be tempted to buy a cheap IDE harddrive or IDE to SATA adaptor from the auction site.