Installing XP Home on an external drive

[Troubled by XP]

I need to install XP home on an external drive (E), but am
unable to get the installation files to copy to the
external drive. They are being copied to the C drive. I
checked the box for 'selecting the partition on which to
install', but am not prompted for the location.

Any ideas on the problem?

 

[H. Debs]

Not the expert, but here's my 2 cents:
If your external drive is not on a regular IDE cable, you should press
F6 quickly as soon a setup starts (it displays a message on the bottom
of the screen), and supply setup with a CD or floppy containing the
driver for your external drive.

Setup will always place a few boot files on the C: drive, no matter
where you actually install windows. And booting will always require
the C: drive to be present (i.e. I don't think you can move your
external drive to another PC and boot windows there).

Habib

 

[Troubled by XP]

My external drive is USB. My external drive is working,
and the proper drivers are loaded. At what point are you
saying to press F6? When the PC boots? The drive is
recognized at startup, but when XP installs, it doesn't
seem to find the external drive. The problem appears to be
the fact that HP is not prompting me for the install
location when the files are being copied from the CD.

Also, all of XP's files were copied to my C drive, not
just a few boot files.

I am not looking to boot from my external drive - I will
be using it more as a mobile device.

Still need more help.

 

[Troubled by XP]

I just found another posting regarding a similar
situation. An MVP replied that XP can only be
successfully installed on an internal drive.

So, now I need to delete the XP installation files which
were copied to my C drive. Problem is, I don't know if I
have located all the files, or, if any changes were made
to existing files. Can anyone help with this issue?

 

[H. Debs]

You're not giving a lot of info, so I'll try to cover some
possibilites.

If you didn't have any Windows installed before, just backup your data
and reformat, or just delete everything and reinstall.
If you did have Windows installed before (seems you did), then just
delete any new folders created on the c drive by setup, leave the
files in the root of c:\ alone if possible. If you are unable to boot
back to your old windows, you can use the recovery console to repair
your boot files. If you now have an extra option at boot to continue
with setup and you want to get rid of it, edit your c:\boot.ini file.