Possible to install xp from a USB pen drive?

I recently purchased a 1 gig usb pen drive and was wondering if it was possible to install xp pro from it? My computer supports booting from the usb drive and I have formatted it to create an ms-dos startup disk but it loads the disc at C: and tries to install into itself. Also the lack of smartdrive support and it would take it much longer to install even if the c: wasnt an issue.

I also tried copying the info from my XP install cd over to the pen drive and it just comes up with something like OS NOT FOUND or something like that. I would assume it has something to do with the bootimage it uses when reading it on startup.


Any ideas?

 

Tried the first one listed spent like 45 mins on it tring different things, didnt work.

 

Might try sys x: where x is the drive letter of the usb drive. then copy the \i386 folder to the usb and if the usb drive boots go to the folder and run winnt.exe. Post back your results, please.

 

What I was trying to do is have it install xp to the harddrive from the usb pendrive. I was able to make it bootable with some 98startup files but I dont know enough to make it assign a drive letter to it other then c: .

I have a modified xp install thats a unattended install, so what Im looking to do it mod it to where I can just stick in the USB drive reboot come back 30 mins later and have a new os installed on it.

The xp iso ( the unattended install one) I have is bootable I can burn it to a cd and it works just fine the thing I cant figure out is how to make the USB drive act like the CD rom drive and not have the OS set it up like C: because when it does that it wants to install the OS into the usb pen drive and Im not wanting it to do that.

Sparrow if you could get me a link of what your talking about I would be able to explore that option you suggested. I would assume your talking about some .sys file I need to mod in order to make it give it a drive letter other then c:


Thanks in advance

 

Assume the usb drive is FAT32, so use DOS to put an OS on it. You could boot with a win98 boot floppy and use the DOS sys command to do that. The problem might be that DOS won't recognize the drive. But you might do the sys in win98SE (in a command window) if you have access to that. I've never tried this, so speaking theoretically.

It makes no differrence what OS you boot with so long as you can call up the winnt.exe file and have that folder available. A DOS batch file should do it. Don't see a need for the .iso file on a usb drive.

 

David522--Hope you solve your problem!
Perhaps in a PM (or here if you do not mind me crashing your thread) I would really like to hear more about

I bought a fairly expensive Western Digital 120GB USB External Hard Drive. Thought I was going to get another Hard Drive functioning just like my internal HD. But all I bought was an expensive, though very large, storage drive. Not possible to boot from it. Nothing on the WD box to that effect, but when I contacted WD they confessed I should contact my PC maker. I did that, and after many hours we all agreed the USB External HD is not bootable, even with the latest BIOS available and with various tweaks to Setup. My PC is less than one year old, so should be fairly up to date.

 

I have,

System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
System Model: A7N8X-E
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG

and it supports booting from a USB drive/pendrive/cd rom in the bois

 

Welshjim

What's your mobo? (make and model number, maybe BIOS version, too)

 

sparrow--
PC: Dell Dimension 4600 (purchased July 24, 2004)
Motherboard: Per Everest
Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4E, 3000 MHz (15 x 200)
Motherboard Name Dell Dimension 4600i
Motherboard Chipset Intel Springdale-G i865G
System Memory 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (08/26/04)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
BIOS version: latest one Dell offers, A12. I updated after purchase of the PC. That is why the date of the BIOS is after purchase of the PC.

 

Welshjim

If booting from usb is available, the BIOS should mention it in setting up the boot order; at least, that's where I've seen it. From the manual:

Try to sys to the external drive in DOS or on a win98 computer in a DOS window first to see if this works (if the drive is FAT32). This is simpler than installing XP on the drive; you might do that later if this proves the drive will boot.

Of course, this is theoretical. I've not done it.

Do it at your own risk!

 

sparrow--Yes, I know. Dell says the device is not bootable with the BIOS available to me, and as mentioned WD is coy on the subject.
I have gotten the BIOS to recognize the "USB Device" and I have even put it as #1 in the Boot Sequence. But while I can use the External HD just fine for storage, I cannot boot from it even though I have Ghosted my entire C:\ drive to it including operating system. BTW--I formatted the External HD to NTFS, since that is what my internal HD is.

 

That could be the problem. Your only choice would seem to be installing an NT OS on the usb drive, and not sure that's possible - would depend on how M$ programmers wrote the installation program.

If you really care to find out if the drive can boot, suggest you reformat a primary partition, using a portion of it, to FAT32 and mark it active, = bootable, (prob. with partition magic or similar). Then try to install dos on it, and go into the BIOS with F2 (rather than F12) at the Dell splash screen and make the boot order appropriate.

Think this requires motivation like to climb a mountain - only because it's there!

 

TonyT--The boot.ini file on my internal hard drive reads
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

The only difference between that and the boot.ini in the Ghosted image on the USB External HD is that the number 1 appears after the word "partition" in both instances instead of 2.

sparrow--Not climbing that mountain. Even if I understood it , where would I get WinNT other than to buy it? It would be cheaper to just install another internal HD.

 

Normally the disk (0) referred to in your boot ini file refers to the Primary HDD, therefore would not boot to USB drive. Does anyone know what disk # the USB drive would show up as????