Install xp from hard disk

[xc]

Hi group

I prepared a hard disk, in one partition
I copied XP files on one folder
now I shall reboot the machine
but I can't get any DOS, to start the installation
process

what could I do now?

thanks in advance
Carlos.

 

[John John - MVP]

Why not boot with the XP CD and install from there?

John

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Hi group

I prepared a hard disk, in one partition
I copied XP files on one folder
now I shall reboot the machine
but I can't get any DOS, to start the installation
process

what could I do now?

thanks in advance
Carlos.

You would have to format the intended Windows partition as a FAT32
partition, then boot the machine with a DOS boot diskette and run the
command d:\i386\winnt to start the installation. I can't quite see why you
would want to follow such as tortuous path when booting the machine with a
WinXP installation CD would suffice, as John John suggests.

 

[xc]

because I suppose it is faster from hard disk,

Carlos.

 

[BillW50]

In xc typed on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:06:18 -0500:

because I suppose it is faster from hard disk,

Carlos.

Well you need to either:

1) Run Setup from a running Windows system

2) Run /i386/winnt32 from BartPE or WinPE

3) Run /i386/winnt from DOS. If you run this from DOS it will be really
slow without smartdrv. MS says up to 24 hours.

Using method #1 or #2 can result in your Windows drive not being drive
C. Which is okay for the most part, but some people doesn't like that.
It really works well from CD though.

 

[Bob I]

Unless you got "DOS" on something bootable you won't be running DOS. So
why aren't you using the bootable CD?

 

[Paul]

because I suppose it is faster from hard disk,

Carlos.

Actually, it isn't faster, when you consider all the time
you'll waste getting the MSDOS floppy set up right

The reason it is not appreciably faster, is because of
SmartDrv. There seems to be a bug in SmartDrv, where the
cache gets flushed, and the MSDOS file copy operation
is slow slow slow. This prevents the hard drive copy
operation from running consistently fast. (It is fast
at first, but then slows down later.) SmartDrv was
suggested as a method to speed up the install, but it
still is not fast enough.

So in my experiments, the "hard drive method" isn't worth
the effort. If your CD drive works, just use it If
your CD drive is broken, then you can try the hard drive
method, with boot floppy.

If you want boot floppies, you can get them here.

http://www.bootdisk.com/

HTH,
Paul