HOW-TO: Install XP via ANY USB Key

Got you, i see what you mean.

 

ok, good.

It seems that it is important what options you choose in part 15. I tried it 2 times. The first time it went wrong, second time it went great! both different settings in part 15

 

i apologise for that, i'll go through it again later, and take a look and edit the guide, this is afterall what it is for, to help everyone out and if we can improve upon it, all the better for everyone else.

 

Glad to see you got it to work

 

thank you

i'm very glad too :geek:

 

First of all, gotta say thanks so much for this guide. I printed it out and followed it step by step and apart from the hal.dll issue (which I worked out) everything worked great!

Just a note.. if you get this message right after it reboots without booting into windows first (after the gui install) meaning you can't get to the boot.ini file to edit, don't panic.

" Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file. "

Simply do the second part of installation again (usb with gui) and windows should boot to the logon screen. When you do get to edit the boot.ini file, don't do as I did and only change one of the rdisk numbers.. I hadn't read the file properly and missed the first one (I found there were two instances of rdisk(1) that required changing). :roll:

I'm currently working on getting all the acer drivers and then I can get my machine working the way I want it.. without linux! :lol:

 

Okay guys about to try this xp installtion method later on tonight so fingers crossed should be back with good news !! can someone just remind me where I can find all the xp drivers required for the little acer aspire HDD version, believe there is a site hosting them all together other than the official acer website ?? do I require them all and is there an order that they should be installed ??

lastly, I take it they have an autorun feature or do you copy them into a particular folder ?? bit confused regards this side off things if someone could just give me a quick run down off whats required asnd how to do it ??!!!

anyway first off all its xp installtion first !!

 

Need some help please --Have opened new console window (Item 6 on Preparing the flash drive) but unsure how to select the bootsect folder from this console window. Have tried the suggestions Ie "cd Desktop" and "cd flash" but the console screen will not accept any words added.Have also tried a copy and paste of the full path name to this window but again no luck. I have no experience working with DOS Commands so should I be Adding anything else or using keys other than "enter" to input the directory name. A quick reply would be appreciated.
Thanks
John

 

Thanks for you write up on this, I still could not get it to work for days.
Untill I found this Vid, almost the same .well documented
Worked Great
Hope it help someone else

 

Anyone able to offer any advice before I have another attemp at this ??!!

 

what operating system are you using?

also, to make it more obvious, the commands basically move folder.

you'll see when you open command prompt it is c:/docs and settings/yournamehere
when you type cd Desktop, it is trying to change the directory, 'change directory'=cd, so when you type that it should be c:/docs and settings/yourname/Desktop.

This is why it is imperative that you unzip the program onto the desktop.

you can do this whenever you are in command prompt so have a play, type dir press enter and you will get a list of folders available for you to move to, and the files too.

 

Thanks so much mate really do appreciatte that , to be honest had another go at installing again tonight before I had a chance to read your kind reply and thought I had got there but during the transfer off the xp files to the actual stick I got a few errors including : invalid number off parameters etc ??? but yep did make the mistake off not unzipping the copy off xp to desktop instead I think I created a new folder within documents just so that I would have all the associatted xp files all together where I could find them rather than trying to locate them within all the other files and cluter etc already gathered on the desktop !!

anyway again thanks you for your kind advice and will certainly let you know how I get on even if its just to ask for more assistance ??!!

thanks again.
john

p.s sorry in answer to your above question yep using xp on my main pc here.

 

I take it there is no reason I would have to actually burn any downloaded xp operating ststem to disc before using it for the usb boot method ie. I could simply point the usb boot etc programme to the source off where these xp files were downloaded to ???

 

No, not neccessary to burn it, but your downloaded copy will most likely be a disc 'image', which you will need to virtually mount, ie pretend to the system it is in a cd drive, use a program called deamon tools, and point the program to the virtual cd drive it has created.

 

Okay thanks as always mate really do appreciatte your advice. okay have transferred the contents off the download to disc and I notice that it says ISO. I take this iso file formatt is okay ?? just direct the usb booting programme to the cd drive on my main pc and it will recognise this iso file okay ??

 

no no, unfortunately not.

Click here: http://www.daemon-tools.cc/downloads/daemon

Download and install this program, it may require a restart, if it does restart, rerun the installer again to complete installation.

A red box / icon will appear in the bottom right corner of the start bar.

Right click > emulation > all options on.

Right click it again>Virtual CD Rom (top choice)>Choose the top choice again, which should be labbelled as a cd drive, this is your virtual drive.

Now with the open box, select the iso file.

This is basically, installing a virtual cd rom drive on your computer, the next step 'puts' the cd 'in' the virtual drive, your computer may try and run it, just tick it off.

Now when the program asks 'where is your cd?' point it to the new virtual drive, as that is where your cd 'is'. In a sense of the word haha.

Hopefully thats easy enough to understand ?

 

Perfect mate, have now downloaded programme and done as you said, the tool bar for this Daemon tools now says Device 0:{ L: }WXPVOL_EN

will try get a chance later on to try it out and hopefully all should be okay this time - fingers crossed !!

and yep you were correct when I went to mount the image the actual windows xp programme menu opened up - obviously closed it like you said. so guess it looks as if I have followed your instructions okay ??!!

for now as always thanks so much.

john

 

yeah, the win xp popping up is a good sign you have done everything as i said, completely correct. Well done!

Also deamons is handy for most things you can download of the internet without ever having to burn the cd, you can just virtually mount the disc.

In fact i do this for most of the games i own, i create an iso disc image, put it on my networked storage box for safe keeping, then all my computers have access to it, without having to dig out the actual disc Very handy tool.

Good luck with your installation.

james

 

Perfect , now have the full xp software on usb disc thanks to your advice ran out off time to actuall install it on the acer itself but I take it this is the easy bit now ??!! any last minute tips on anything to watch out for in this last bit off the process ?? I take it the deleting etc off the partions is all easy enough ??

 

yeah super easy, i think you just press D to delete the partitions, it says on the screen what actions are available to you and what buttons to press.