Install windows XP from pen drive

In this article we would prepare pen drive as a window XP installation media. Once we prepared this pen drive you could install XP from this. This is useful for notebook or CDROM / DVDROM less system.

Requirement

• Windows Xp installation disk,
• solution.rar file
• Working pen drive of at least 2 GB.

We need to transfer all XP installation media files into pen drive. If you don't have dump of XP CD on hard disk then you need to copy them from XP CD.

Download this file solution.rar and extract it.

Attach a pen drive (All data will be erase from pen drive)

Open the folder where you have extracted the files from solution.rar and run HpUSBformat.exe.

This command will detect your USB disk, if not, select form the list ( in this example my USB memory stick is drive M: )

Now set these options

• Volume label : - SYSTEM
• Check marks on :- Create a DOS Start up disk
• Select radio button :- Using DOS system files located at:
• Give the path where you have extracted solution.rar (Give the path of DOS folder) files

At this moment pen drive has become DOS bootable.

Copy all other files from DOS folder to your USB disk. ( you can overwrite existing ones)

Insert Windows Xp installation disk into CD-ROM and copy all files from CD to USB drive.

Now pen drive should look like this

Now you have a xp bootable pen drive.

Now we have XP bootable pen drive. We would install XP from this pen drive.

Boot system from this pen drive. If system does not boot from pen drive check first bootable media setting in BIOS.

Step1:- When system is booted up, and you see command prompt, type sys d: and hit enter if you see system transferred - you have luck, FAT32 file system is on drive C:, you will not lose your data
- go to step 5
- if any problem appears go to step 2

Step2:-REMEMBER, you will loose all data from drive C:/> - when system is booted up from USB, your drive C: appears as D:

Step3:- Type format d:/q/s to format drive D:
accept and when it is finished, go to step 5 ( you are lucky, you don't need to make partitions)
otherwise go to step 4

Step4:- Type fdisk and hit enter
create new partition ( after restart boot with pendrive in)
go to step 3 and format the partitions and come back here :)
type pqmagic and set your new partition active
( physical drive 2, Advanced A, set Active - S, are you sure - Y, Exit - X )

Step5:-Type nc and hit enter, and using Norton Commander, copy all files form pendrive to disk C: ( you can overwrite existing ones)

Step6:-Restart Laptop without pen drive in it (it should start from hard drive)

Step7:-Type cd i386 and hit enter (it will enter i386 folder)

Step8:-Type winnt and hit enter

Step9:-this will launch xp installation process and you can install xp as you do with cd.