Is it possible to install XP if the XP-CD is pre-copied to a blank harddrive?

Klaus Jorgensen wrote:

May I ask what kind of equipment you are targeting with a setup
like this - some sort of embedded device or what?

HP 2133 Mini-Note PC

I believe that product is on the verge of being (or already has been)
discontinued. Availability seems very limited at this point. It was
introduced by HP about exactly a year ago.

I recently purchsed 2 of them for about $220 each (the last two
available from that vendor).

The 2133 came in 2 basic configurations:

a) 512 mb ram, 4gb solid-state drive, 1.0 Ghz Via C7 CPU, Suse linux
b) 1 gb ram (or 2?), 160 gb hard drive, 1.6 Ghz Via C7 CPU, Vista

XP was never offered, but XP drivers are available for it.

I purchased the (a) version, and intend to bring the ram up to 1 gb and
replace the existing SSD drive with a conventional hard drive.

The 2133 is unique in that for an 8.9" display it's resolution is 1280 x
768 (most netbooks have 1000 x 600 resolution). All aluminum chasis
too.

Klaus Jorgensen wrote:

May I ask what kind of equipment you are targeting with a setup
like this - some sort of embedded device or what?

HP 2133 Mini-Note PC

I believe that product is on the verge of being (or already has been)
discontinued. Availability seems very limited at this point. It was
introduced by HP about exactly a year ago.

I recently purchsed 2 of them for about $220 each (the last two
available from that vendor).

The 2133 came in 2 basic configurations:

a) 512 mb ram, 4gb solid-state drive, 1.0 Ghz Via C7 CPU, Suse linux
b) 1 gb ram (or 2?), 160 gb hard drive, 1.6 Ghz Via C7 CPU, Vista

XP was never offered, but XP drivers are available for it.

I purchased the (a) version, and intend to bring the ram up to 1 gb and
replace the existing SSD drive with a conventional hard drive.

The 2133 is unique in that for an 8.9" display it's resolution is 1280 x
768 (most netbooks have 1000 x 600 resolution). All aluminum chasis
too.

Klaus Jorgensen wrote:

It sounds like he's doing it on a system with no cd-rom access

Yes (see previous post)

(copying the xp setup files on to hd on a different system)?

Yes (by slaving the drive to a win-98 system).

To me "not have any ability to boot from any external device"
also means no USB ports, and what kind of system does not have
USB ports?

While the target device does have USB ports, it's not worth my time to
figure out how to get the device to boot from a USB stick (if indeed
that option is available in the device's bios). I do not yet have my
hands on the target device (that will happen next week).

And because the target device does not have a hard drive, I figured the
most ergonomic course of action would be to pre-load the drive with a
copy of the XP cd prior to installing the drive into the device.

Klaus Jorgensen wrote:

It sounds like he's doing it on a system with no cd-rom access

Yes (see previous post)

(copying the xp setup files on to hd on a different system)?

Yes (by slaving the drive to a win-98 system).

To me "not have any ability to boot from any external device"
also means no USB ports, and what kind of system does not have
USB ports?

While the target device does have USB ports, it's not worth my time to
figure out how to get the device to boot from a USB stick (if indeed
that option is available in the device's bios). I do not yet have my
hands on the target device (that will happen next week).

And because the target device does not have a hard drive, I figured the
most ergonomic course of action would be to pre-load the drive with a
copy of the XP cd prior to installing the drive into the device.

XP Guy explained on 25-04-2009 :
While the target device does have USB ports, it's not worth my time to
figure out how to get the device to boot from a USB stick (if indeed
that option is available in the device's bios). I do not yet have my
hands on the target device (that will happen next week).

A couple of weeks ago I managed to do an XP installation from a USB
stick. A SanDisk Cruzer with U3 support can be modified to have an XP
ISO image copied onto its CD partition - unfortunately this partition
is recognized as a USB CDROM boot device only in fairly new systems
like Lenovo T500 or M58.

Fortunately my employer doesn't mind if I spend some time digging into
stuff like this. (c:



--
/klaus

XP Guy explained on 25-04-2009 :
While the target device does have USB ports, it's not worth my time to
figure out how to get the device to boot from a USB stick (if indeed
that option is available in the device's bios). I do not yet have my
hands on the target device (that will happen next week).

A couple of weeks ago I managed to do an XP installation from a USB
stick. A SanDisk Cruzer with U3 support can be modified to have an XP
ISO image copied onto its CD partition - unfortunately this partition
is recognized as a USB CDROM boot device only in fairly new systems
like Lenovo T500 or M58.

Fortunately my employer doesn't mind if I spend some time digging into
stuff like this. (c:



--
/klaus

Tim Meddick wrote:
XP Guy,
It was called WINNT.EXE to differentiate it from setup.exe
on all the previous DOS Windows versions because they [Microsoft]
were so proud of their new NT system and didn't want anybody to get
confused over which they were using (I guess).
Did you even look at my post in amongst all the 'angst' I'm sure I
was the first with a definitive answer that really tried to answer
the question you asked. (Namely, that is was very possible)

Good grief, is it really so important to you that you get credit for
being the first to offer something? IIRC he responded to you in one of
his collective responses. Did you just guess at being the first, or did
you reassemble the thread to see if you were? Then you wouldn't have to
be guessing and could pitch your ego a little stronger. Who cares who
was first? It got sorted, which is the important thing.
Twayne




"XP Guy" wrote in message
...
I have performed the following steps today on a real PC (and not in a
virtual environment) so this concludes this thread as far as I can
tell. Given:

A) a hard drive (or more specifically, a volume on a hard drive) that
has been formatted as FAT32 and for which MS-DOS system files have
been placed on it such that the drive will boot MS-DOS from that
volume, and B) given that the contents of an XP-sp3 CD (specifically
system
builder version, and perhaps any or all versions) has been copied to
it's own directory on said volume (while maintaining any long file
names and directory names that may exist on the CD), and

C) given that himem.sys and smartdrv.exe have been started as part of
the autoexec and/or config.sys DOS environment, then

D) it is possible to start and successfully complete the XP-sp3
installation process simply by running the file "winnt.exe" from the
/i386 directory of the CD image as copied to the hard drive. The XP
cd need not be present in the CD drive during the installation. No
other command line arguments are necessary.

As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS)
there is no other preparation needed. Those that seek the imaginary
benefits of NTFS would first need to prepare the hard drive such
that the desired NTFS volume exists and is positioned appropriated
to be your C drive and the startable FAT32 installation volume later
presumably becomes the D drive as the XP installation proceeds. After
the installation is complete, the secondary FAT32 volume can
be deleted and it's space can become incorporated into the primary
NTFS partition, or the FAT32 volume can remain and act as a
"recovery disk" should re-installation be required later.

Now, regarding the file winnt.exe in the /i386 directory, I don't
know what other purpose that file has, but if it's only purpose is
to be an alternate launch point for the installation of XP, then
perhaps someone else can explain why it wasn't simply named
setup.exe as per usual conventions. I don't believe there is any
other file named setup.exe in the i386 directory.

Anyone that wants to run XP on a device that does not have any
external boot capability (but who can remove the device's internal
hard drive and slave it to another machine to perform steps A and B
above) may want to follow these steps in order to effect the
installation of XP onto the target device.

Tim Meddick wrote:
XP Guy,
It was called WINNT.EXE to differentiate it from setup.exe
on all the previous DOS Windows versions because they [Microsoft]
were so proud of their new NT system and didn't want anybody to get
confused over which they were using (I guess).
Did you even look at my post in amongst all the 'angst' I'm sure I
was the first with a definitive answer that really tried to answer
the question you asked. (Namely, that is was very possible)

Good grief, is it really so important to you that you get credit for
being the first to offer something? IIRC he responded to you in one of
his collective responses. Did you just guess at being the first, or did
you reassemble the thread to see if you were? Then you wouldn't have to
be guessing and could pitch your ego a little stronger. Who cares who
was first? It got sorted, which is the important thing.
Twayne




"XP Guy" wrote in message
...
I have performed the following steps today on a real PC (and not in a
virtual environment) so this concludes this thread as far as I can
tell. Given:

A) a hard drive (or more specifically, a volume on a hard drive) that
has been formatted as FAT32 and for which MS-DOS system files have
been placed on it such that the drive will boot MS-DOS from that
volume, and B) given that the contents of an XP-sp3 CD (specifically
system
builder version, and perhaps any or all versions) has been copied to
it's own directory on said volume (while maintaining any long file
names and directory names that may exist on the CD), and

C) given that himem.sys and smartdrv.exe have been started as part of
the autoexec and/or config.sys DOS environment, then

D) it is possible to start and successfully complete the XP-sp3
installation process simply by running the file "winnt.exe" from the
/i386 directory of the CD image as copied to the hard drive. The XP
cd need not be present in the CD drive during the installation. No
other command line arguments are necessary.

As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS)
there is no other preparation needed. Those that seek the imaginary
benefits of NTFS would first need to prepare the hard drive such
that the desired NTFS volume exists and is positioned appropriated
to be your C drive and the startable FAT32 installation volume later
presumably becomes the D drive as the XP installation proceeds. After
the installation is complete, the secondary FAT32 volume can
be deleted and it's space can become incorporated into the primary
NTFS partition, or the FAT32 volume can remain and act as a
"recovery disk" should re-installation be required later.

Now, regarding the file winnt.exe in the /i386 directory, I don't
know what other purpose that file has, but if it's only purpose is
to be an alternate launch point for the installation of XP, then
perhaps someone else can explain why it wasn't simply named
setup.exe as per usual conventions. I don't believe there is any
other file named setup.exe in the i386 directory.

Anyone that wants to run XP on a device that does not have any
external boot capability (but who can remove the device's internal
hard drive and slave it to another machine to perform steps A and B
above) may want to follow these steps in order to effect the
installation of XP onto the target device.

John John - MVP wrote:
XP Guy wrote:

As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS)
there is no other preparation needed.

Sheesh! You could have just booted with the Windows XP CD and
formated it to FAT32 with the Setup utility, what a complete waste of
time just to install XP to a FAT32 drive!

Those that seek the imaginary benefits of NTFS

Only someone who understand absolutely nothing about NTFS would ever
say such an ignorant thing!

,,,

Sheesh is right. There you go, jumping right into name calling because
someone disagrees with your opinion. You didn't even bother to ask why
he thought that way. There could be a valid reason it wasn't necessary
to give here. He seems to be inexperienced in some things, but ...
maybe not.

John John - MVP wrote:
XP Guy wrote:

As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS)
there is no other preparation needed.

Sheesh! You could have just booted with the Windows XP CD and
formated it to FAT32 with the Setup utility, what a complete waste of
time just to install XP to a FAT32 drive!

Those that seek the imaginary benefits of NTFS

Only someone who understand absolutely nothing about NTFS would ever
say such an ignorant thing!

,,,

Sheesh is right. There you go, jumping right into name calling because
someone disagrees with your opinion. You didn't even bother to ask why
he thought that way. There could be a valid reason it wasn't necessary
to give here. He seems to be inexperienced in some things, but ...
maybe not.

Hi,

Thanks for coming back with the verification/clarifications. Always
nice to see the results and I'm glad to see it's sorted out. If you
have any energy for this thread left, now that it is sorted out, I do
have a couple comments/questions inline:


\XP Guy wrote:
I have performed the following steps today on a real PC (and not in a
virtual environment) so this concludes this thread as far as I can
tell.

IMO VMs are a good indicator of whether something won't work. Sort of
like a pregnancy test in reverse - if it say no, it might still be yes.
Once automated it's pretty simple to run.


....

D) it is possible to start and successfully complete the XP-sp3
installation process simply by running the file "winnt.exe" from the
/i386 directory of the CD image as copied to the hard drive. The XP
cd need not be present in the CD drive during the installation. No
other command line arguments are necessary.

I thought there would be in "install.bat" file; no? It probably only
did the same thing anyway.


As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS) there
is no other preparation needed. Those that seek the imaginary
benefits of NTFS would first need to prepare the hard drive such that

I am really curious why you think NTFS benefits are "imaginary"? Is
this something particular to your setup or are you saying there is no
benefit to NTFS regardless, ever? Or is it an experience thing? What?

the desired NTFS volume exists and is positioned appropriated to be
your C drive and the startable FAT32 installation volume later
presumably becomes the D drive as the XP installation proceeds.
After the installation is complete, the secondary FAT32 volume can be
deleted and it's space can become incorporated into the primary NTFS
partition, or the FAT32 volume can remain and act as a "recovery
disk" should re-installation be required later.

....

Anyone that wants to run XP on a device that does not have any
external boot capability (but who can remove the device's internal
hard drive and slave it to another machine to perform steps A and B
above) may want to follow these steps in order to effect the
installation of XP onto the target device.

I guess I can see that: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you mean there is
no CD/DVD drive, no USB ports or the BIOS won't allow booting from them,
same for thumb drives, etc.? I saw your machine descrip elsewhere and
it's hard to imagine a machine from a year ago wouldn't have some sort
of external boot capability.

Just for grins, I did a quickie lookup at HP for the specs and there was
a paragraph that led me to think you could boot to a USB or ?Bluetooth?
device.
--------------------------
Wireless support: Broadcom 802.11a/b/g, b/g, optional Bluetooth 2.0, HP
Wireless Assistant
Communications Broadcom Ethernet Integrated Controller (10/100/1000)

Expansion slots: (1) ExpressCard/54 slot, Secure Digital (SD) slot

Ports and connectors: (2) USB 2.0 ports, VGA, power connector,
RJ-45/Ethernet, stereo headphone/line out, stereo microphone in,
optional VGA webcam

Input device: 92% full-sized keyboard, touchpad with scroll zone
Softwa HP Backup and Recovery Manager, Roxio Creator 9, Microsoft
Office Ready 20078
------------------------

Thanks; I'm quite curious about the non-boot and NTFS questions.

Regards,

Twayne
--

Hi,

Thanks for coming back with the verification/clarifications. Always
nice to see the results and I'm glad to see it's sorted out. If you
have any energy for this thread left, now that it is sorted out, I do
have a couple comments/questions inline:


\XP Guy wrote:
I have performed the following steps today on a real PC (and not in a
virtual environment) so this concludes this thread as far as I can
tell.

IMO VMs are a good indicator of whether something won't work. Sort of
like a pregnancy test in reverse - if it say no, it might still be yes.
Once automated it's pretty simple to run.


....

D) it is possible to start and successfully complete the XP-sp3
installation process simply by running the file "winnt.exe" from the
/i386 directory of the CD image as copied to the hard drive. The XP
cd need not be present in the CD drive during the installation. No
other command line arguments are necessary.

I thought there would be in "install.bat" file; no? It probably only
did the same thing anyway.


As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS) there
is no other preparation needed. Those that seek the imaginary
benefits of NTFS would first need to prepare the hard drive such that

I am really curious why you think NTFS benefits are "imaginary"? Is
this something particular to your setup or are you saying there is no
benefit to NTFS regardless, ever? Or is it an experience thing? What?

the desired NTFS volume exists and is positioned appropriated to be
your C drive and the startable FAT32 installation volume later
presumably becomes the D drive as the XP installation proceeds.
After the installation is complete, the secondary FAT32 volume can be
deleted and it's space can become incorporated into the primary NTFS
partition, or the FAT32 volume can remain and act as a "recovery
disk" should re-installation be required later.

....

Anyone that wants to run XP on a device that does not have any
external boot capability (but who can remove the device's internal
hard drive and slave it to another machine to perform steps A and B
above) may want to follow these steps in order to effect the
installation of XP onto the target device.

I guess I can see that: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you mean there is
no CD/DVD drive, no USB ports or the BIOS won't allow booting from them,
same for thumb drives, etc.? I saw your machine descrip elsewhere and
it's hard to imagine a machine from a year ago wouldn't have some sort
of external boot capability.

Just for grins, I did a quickie lookup at HP for the specs and there was
a paragraph that led me to think you could boot to a USB or ?Bluetooth?
device.
--------------------------
Wireless support: Broadcom 802.11a/b/g, b/g, optional Bluetooth 2.0, HP
Wireless Assistant
Communications Broadcom Ethernet Integrated Controller (10/100/1000)

Expansion slots: (1) ExpressCard/54 slot, Secure Digital (SD) slot

Ports and connectors: (2) USB 2.0 ports, VGA, power connector,
RJ-45/Ethernet, stereo headphone/line out, stereo microphone in,
optional VGA webcam

Input device: 92% full-sized keyboard, touchpad with scroll zone
Softwa HP Backup and Recovery Manager, Roxio Creator 9, Microsoft
Office Ready 20078
------------------------

Thanks; I'm quite curious about the non-boot and NTFS questions.

Regards,

Twayne
--

Twayne wrote:
John John - MVP wrote:
XP Guy wrote:

As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS)
there is no other preparation needed.
Sheesh! You could have just booted with the Windows XP CD and
formated it to FAT32 with the Setup utility, what a complete waste of
time just to install XP to a FAT32 drive!

Those that seek the imaginary benefits of NTFS
Only someone who understand absolutely nothing about NTFS would ever
say such an ignorant thing!

,,,

Sheesh is right. There you go, jumping right into name calling because
someone disagrees with your opinion. You didn't even bother to ask why
he thought that way. There could be a valid reason it wasn't necessary
to give here. He seems to be inexperienced in some things, but ...
maybe not.

If you think that the NTFS benefits are imaginary then you belong to the
same club as XP Guy (aka 98 Guy).

John

Twayne wrote:
John John - MVP wrote:
XP Guy wrote:

As I prefer to install XP directly to a FAT32 volume (not NTFS)
there is no other preparation needed.
Sheesh! You could have just booted with the Windows XP CD and
formated it to FAT32 with the Setup utility, what a complete waste of
time just to install XP to a FAT32 drive!

Those that seek the imaginary benefits of NTFS
Only someone who understand absolutely nothing about NTFS would ever
say such an ignorant thing!

,,,

Sheesh is right. There you go, jumping right into name calling because
someone disagrees with your opinion. You didn't even bother to ask why
he thought that way. There could be a valid reason it wasn't necessary
to give here. He seems to be inexperienced in some things, but ...
maybe not.

If you think that the NTFS benefits are imaginary then you belong to the
same club as XP Guy (aka 98 Guy).

John

After weeding thru all of the crap and whining instead of answereing the
question, I will answer it. According to tech support at MICROSOFT, that is
what I was told to do when I could not get XP to install on a newly built PC.
I don't remember the exact procedure, but I know that it was in the \i386
folder if I remember correctly. I could not get it to work due to the CD
being bad. They sent me a new CD subsequently. That CD worked. It would be
easier to do if you could use another PC to do the copying. Then put the HD
in the new PC, if that is what you are doing. You can then use any CD that
will boot to get you to the DOS prompt A:\. I hope this helps.

"XP Guy" wrote:

Shenan Stanley wrote:

So, it it possible?

Yes.

Google could have told you that. ;-)

And actually, no. Google didn't tell me that.

I didn't actually come across anything or anyone who gave a catagorical
"yes" to that question, and certainly no one who claimed they've done it
(let alone explaining how).

If that's true, I haven't found it yet.

If you have, is there some reason you're not posting it?

You didn't/haven't asked how.

You asked is there a way/if it was possible.

And until you actually say how, then what basis do I have to believe the
accuracy of your answer?

How do I know that by answering "yes", that you have actually understood
the question? Others have put forward an affirmative answer, yet their
corresponding explanation as to the "how" indicates they did not
actually address or understand the question.

You seem (according to your own responses) just want to be given
the answers to the questions you ask.

I think any reasonable or rational person would have realized that my
question was framed in such a way as to invite an explanation of how to
do it (if indeed it can be done) and not simply to seek a "yes" answer
without the corresponding details. Clearly, in the context of the
question, an answer stating simply "no" is possible, while an answer
stating only "yes" is incomplete (if not useless) without the
corresponding details of how.

So, now I ask you how it can be done.