Installing XP using USB drive...

[Payne3d]

any good guides recommended?
I've tried a few guides but certain parts of the guide don't work in Vista because of admin rights and things.

[badboy]

make usb bootable
copy over the winxp files to usb

its not harder than that.
Have done it myself

[Payne3d]

make usb bootable
copy over the winxp files to usb

its not harder than that.
Have done it myself

HP USB utility will allow me to do this?

[caveman-jim]

Yeah, should do. Link

[Payne3d]

So why do they have BartPE and all sorts of things listed on some of the guides?

[caveman-jim]

Thats for running XP from a USB drive, not running setup to install XP into a fixed disk (IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS).

[Payne3d]

Thats for running XP from a USB drive, not running setup to install XP into a fixed disk (IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS).

http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html

[caveman-jim]

Windows PE is a deprecated Windows XP Pre-installation Environment used to prepare and install systems.

[caveman-jim]

Lexar USB format utility - http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15923

[Payne3d]

Lexar USB format utility - http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15923

So caveman...all i do is run that program, copy the i386 folder to the usb drive and run winnt.exe?
If so, do i also need to run smartdrv? I remember when I used to install Windows 2000 from dos, i had to run smartdrv to speed up the process.

[Chuki]

It's not as simple as Vista or Win7, but here is the guide I use to put XP back on my optical driveless wind. Make sure you download version 10, it has all the programs you would need, but puts them all under one easy to use command line interface.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=111406

XP install wont run if you just copy files over, unlike vista where all you have to do is reformat your usb with fat32, copy the disk over and it runs. XP looks for a CD, so if its not there it wont run. With the tool above though you need to Leave the USB in and keep booting from it until you get your XP desktop then you can pull it out. Each restart it loads the PE environment so you can continue setup.

And a side note, make sure the partition your installing it too in XP setup is labled C, otherwise it wont work. If its not C do what you can to make it say C.

[Payne3d]

It's not as simple as Vista or Win7, but here is the guide I use to put XP back on my optical driveless wind. Make sure you download version 10, it has all the programs you would need, but puts them all under one easy to use command line interface.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=111406

XP install wont run if you just copy files over, unlike vista where all you have to do is reformat your usb with fat32, copy the disk over and it runs. XP looks for a CD, so if its not there it wont run. With the tool above though you need to Leave the USB in and keep booting from it until you get your XP desktop then you can pull it out. Each restart it loads the PE environment so you can continue setup.

And a side note, make sure the partition your installing it too in XP setup is labled C, otherwise it wont work. If its not C do what you can to make it say C.

Thanks chuki, i'll try this.
I tried copying the windows 98se start up disk onto the usb drive using hp usb format tool and the system boots fine.
But when i run winnt.exe, it doesn't see the internal drive of the computer...it starts installing the files on the same usb drive.