Can I Re-install/Repair Win XP from a USB Drive?

[Scott]

My CD drive is unable to read any disks. Can I re-install/repair from a USB
drive? (Putting the OS CS contents on a thumb drive.)

My desktop has Win XP SP3, the OS CD is SP2.

Thanks
Scott
Los Angeles

 

[Bill in Co.]

I don't think that's possible (but someone will correct me if I'm wrong).

But why would you try reinstalling windows to fix a CD drive related
problem? That doesn't sound very logical. Just try to debug the CD
problem with windows up and running.

 

[Jonathan Harker]

I don't think that's possible (but someone will correct me if I'm wrong).

But why would you try reinstalling windows to fix a CD drive related
problem? That doesn't sound very logical. Just try to debug the CD
problem with windows up and running.

It should have occurred to you that "Scott" wanted to reinstall XP and
THEN found out that the drive had problems. You're getting too old
for this.

 

[Paul]

My CD drive is unable to read any disks. Can I re-install/repair from a USB
drive? (Putting the OS CS contents on a thumb drive.)

My desktop has Win XP SP3, the OS CD is SP2.

Thanks
Scott
Los Angeles

Some hints of how to do it, here. My current install
of WinXP, was done using nothing but the hard drive
and something to boot MSDOS. I have an MSDOS boot
floppy, but copying the floppy to a USB stick also
worked on this computer. Your mileage may vary.
(No two USB sticks/computer combos, work alike.)

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.computer/msg/dafa8735c99c0c49?dmode=source

If you have a second computer, you could use that to
place two partitions on the target hard drive, and
copy over the files. Then, the remaining (complicated)
detail, is making the right flavor of MSDOS boot disk.
I spent most of one day, building one I liked. Fortunately,
I have an old one from Win98 days, which provided the
base files. I just added a few tweaks and toys to it.

There are plenty of clever articles on the web to use
as a reference. So I didn't invent this.

http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=16713

Paul

 

[Bill in Co.]

It should have occurred to you that "Scott" wanted to reinstall XP and
THEN found out that the drive had problems. You're getting too old
for this.

LOL. Judging from "all" your contributions to these newsgroups, enuf said.
The emperor has no clothes.

 

[Tim Meddick]

Yes, it is possible. Although, with some caveats. Firstly, I have no idea
how to go about making a bootable USB flash drive. Only if you can still
get to Windows XP, even in safe mode, should you be able to do this without
the need to. First copy the entire XP CD (using someone else's machine, of
course) onto the flash drive then take it back to your computer and run the
x:\i386\winnt.exe file. It will behave exactly as it does on the CD. If
you need to do a "clean install" from scratch you will also need a set of XP
Boot floppy start-up disks. You can download these for your version of
WinXP (Home, Pro) from:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994

Then go down to the middle of the page and select either Windows XP original
release, Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)
and, of those, either Home Edition or Professional.
After your computer has booted from these disks, type in the location of the
i386 directory on the USB flash drive when prompted

 

[Jonathan Harker]

LOL. Judging from "all" your contributions to these newsgroups, enuf said.
The emperor has no clothes.

You were clearly missing the OP's point, old man.

 

[Scott]

Thank you for the information.

I have discovered that I can only install, I cannot repair. This is because
my OS CD is SP2 and the desktop is SP3.

I have completed my DVD/CD drive troubleshooting and I think it is bad.

I do have a notebook, so my situation is not critical.

Thanks
Scott
Los Angeles