Install XP Pro SP2 from USB stick

It works !!

Here is the best method that I found in order to install XP into the laptop from a USB stick. I'm doing this because I cannot install from the CD as it hangs when detecting hardware. This is a huge improvement of the previous method I described.

Requirements:

• A computer with XP SP2 already installed
• A slipstreamed or retail XP with the ServicePack 2
• A USB stick of at least 512 MB
• PeToUSB - Grab from http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=petousb

This is the configuration in my setup:

• The CD drive is mapped on D:
• My 1GB USB stick maps to E:
• I'm using a Spanish XP SP2 slipstreamed setup CD

The steps to perform are the following:

1. Launch PeToUSB and select your USB stick, mark only Enable Disk Format and Enable LBA (FAT16X) and proceed. Put a volume name if you want. This will create your USB WinXP bootable.

2. Insert the CD on the XP computer and close the setup window if it appears.

3. Run the setup program (start -> run) with the following command (in a single line)

D:\i386\winnt32.exe /dudisable /makelocalsource /noreboot /syspart:E /tempdrive:E

Select "New installation", accept the EULA and type the CD key, and do not update the partition to NTFS, if asked. This will create some files in the USB and two directories.

4. Put the USB in the laptop, and boot from it, by either indicating the USB Hard Disk in the BIOS boot order, or by pressing F12 on startup.

This will start the installation of WindowsXP in the laptop. Also, you can use the USB stick as a recovery console. But beware that after the installation, the files on the USB will be deleted.

Make sure that you've already got a NTFS partition ready for the setup. I didn't have one, so I had to create it with Linux using fdisk and setting the partition as type 7 and the bootable flag, and then later quick-format it in the XP setup page.

There can be problems when rebooting, as the boot.ini file might be pointing to an erroneous disk or partition for the Windows installation. In this case you have to modify (by using the recovery console, for example) the boot.ini to point to the proper location. In my case I had two XP entries in the bootloader screen, and the second one worked for me. Then later used msconfig to remove the invalid entry.

Please leave a comment sharing your experiences !!