Installing Windows XP from FAT32 drive

Tristan · 10-07-2005, 01:51

I've just changed things around on my system, so that I'm now running Linux on my main hard drives (2xSATA in RAID 0). It works great, but I figure that since I've still got a licence for Windows XP it may come in handy to have it on a spare hard drive.

I've got two 20GB drives attached to a PATA controller. I want to make one an NTFS Windows XP installation, and format the other one as FAT32 to use as a transfer space between Linux and Windows (FAT32/VFAT is the only filesystem both will write to reliably).

None of this is especially difficult, but what I was thinking was that instead of installing Windows from the CD, I could copy the files onto the FAT32 drive and install from there. I did this with the Linux installation and it worked very well, and sped things up no end (in fact, all I had to do was copy the .iso files I downloaded, without even unpacking them -- but then that's why Linux is great

).

Is this possible? Presumably I'd still have to boot from an XP CD, but after doing that, how do I tell it that I want to install from D:?

Cheers,

Tristan

Stuart · 10-07-2005, 01:56

No, you just need to copy the i386 (& sub folders) folder somewhere, then run "winnt.exe" from there. I think you can just run it without any parameters and it will ask you everything it needs.

You don't need to boot from CD. All you need is a bootable hard drive that goes to some sort of command line (Dos, Windows 95 or 98).

Also, if you follow the instructions at http://www.thetechguide.com/articles/slipstream.html, you can "slipstream" (build in) any Service pack to your base install.

purenuman · 10-07-2005, 02:15

I don't think there is much point in installing from the HD unless you are doing as scastle says and you are going to "slipstream" service packs/updates.

XP will copy the installation files to the HD as the first part of the install so all you are saving is the time you have spent copying them there in the first place.... The install will seem faster but if you add the time that you have spent messing about you'll come out about even.

Tristan · 10-07-2005, 02:21

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I have a slipstreamed SP2 tree on my HD, but the version I have on CD is just vanilla "SP0" Windows XP. So doing it this way would not only install faster but would save me having to download SP2.

Thanks for the info -- it sounds like it's do-able, so I'm going to give it a go. See you in an hour or two, all being well!

Tristan · 10-07-2005, 19:01

Well that was an ordeal. Ended up installing from the CD, as installing from the disk just refused to work no matter what I did.

Of course, then I was dumped into Windows with barely any devices working -- no sound (via my Audigy nor on-board AC97), no network (neither wired nor wireless), no Bluetooth, no printer, all of which worked out of the box in Fedora...

Rubbish!

purenuman · 10-07-2005, 19:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tristan

Well that was an ordeal. Ended up installing from the CD, as installing from the disk just refused to work no matter what I did.

Of course, then I was dumped into Windows with barely any devices working -- no sound (via my Audigy nor on-board AC97), no network (neither wired nor wireless), no Bluetooth, no printer, all of which worked out of the box in Fedora...

Rubbish!

You should have "slipstreamed" your drivers (& sp2) in to an XP CD

http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html