Install XP from a remote cd drive

[Guest]

I've been asked to install XP on a machine that is currently running W95. The
RAM, processor and disk space is sufficient for the upgrade, but the machine
has no CD or floppy drive. By booting into W95, I can navigate to a cd drive
on another machine and run the setup / .exe files on that disk.

The question is, can I install XP this way? I know i can set the
installation running, but when it reboots, will I be able to point it back
towards the remote drive to continue the installation?

Any help or advice would be appreciated

TIA

Adrian

 

[Tom Porterfield]

I've been asked to install XP on a machine that is currently running W95. The
RAM, processor and disk space is sufficient for the upgrade, but the machine
has no CD or floppy drive. By booting into W95, I can navigate to a cd drive
on another machine and run the setup / .exe files on that disk.

The question is, can I install XP this way? I know i can set the
installation running, but when it reboots, will I be able to point it back
towards the remote drive to continue the installation?

Any help or advice would be appreciated

Instead of attempting this, which may fail, I would recommend copying the
i386 folder and all sub-folders from the remote CD drive to the local hard
disk and then install from the local copy.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Windows
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.

 

[David Kelsey]

What about installing the CD on the W95 machine temporarily and installing
XP from it in the normal way?

David Kelsey

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I've been asked to install XP on a machine that is currently running W95. The
RAM, processor and disk space is sufficient for the upgrade, but the machine
has no CD or floppy drive. By booting into W95, I can navigate to a cd drive
on another machine and run the setup / .exe files on that disk.

The question is, can I install XP this way? I know i can set the
installation running, but when it reboots, will I be able to point it back
towards the remote drive to continue the installation?

Any help or advice would be appreciated

TIA

Adrian

You will probably get stuck after a reboot. Borrow a CD drive
from another machine - this will take you far less time than playing
around with network connections. Alternatively, buy a CD drive -
they are cheap!

 

[Stephen]

I think WinXP can be installed over a network etc. etc. but it seems like
more effort than it is worth for just one computer. So why not just pop in a
CD-ROM drive, at least temporarily, and get it done.

What's a CD-ROM drive cost these days, anyway, 23 bucks?

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=992349/ut=45c692262fd1b63e

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all the replies. I didn't make clear in the original post that it
is laptop running W95, so not quite as straight forward as borrowing or
installing a CD Rom drive.

Anyway, I copied the i386 folder over from one machine to the other, then
navigated through network neighborhood to the remote cd drive to run setup.exe

As the install process started, set up displayed a dialog box that it would
look for install files on \\remotemachine\Ddrive etc

During setup, I asked it to convert from FAT32 to NTFS which I thought may
overwrite the i386 folder, but...

The setup/installation then proceeded without a hitch!

Not sure whether it got the required files from the remote drive or the
copied i386 folder, but hey! it worked whatever!


Thanks again for the advice