If the partition is formatted with NTFS, that method will not work and you
will have to build the floppy set earlier mentioned. If you cannot find
makeboot.exe, it is available as a knowledge base article at
www.microsoft.com or at www.windowsxp.nu.

Booting from floppy is painfully slow and tedius, so if you can set the bios
to boot from CD, reinstall XP, format the partition to FAT32 and then any
Windows 98 boot disk will allow you to access your drive if you have
problems. You can always convert to NTFS later.

Larry A. Kaduce
 


-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Rode
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 9:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] I need serious help with Windows XP installation


>You cannot run XP setup from a DOS boot floppy.

Yes you can. Boot off a floppy that is setup to load smartdrive.exe, and, if
necessary, your CDROM DOS drivers. I recommend configuring smartdrive with a
huge cache, one quarter of your RAM, up to 36 megs. If you do not do this,
and use the smartdrive default size, then it can take a very long time,
hours, to transfer the startup files, from your i386 directory to your C
drive. Nobody, including Microsoft, understands why this occurs on some PCs.
Make sure you have at least 216 megabyets of hard drive space available on
your CD drive.

After booting, go to the \I386 directory and type the command  :\winnt . The
XP, or Windows 2000, or NT4 setup will take off.

Here are the switches for the winnt command

WINNT [/S[:]sourcepath] [/T[:]tempdrive] [/I[:]inffile]
       [/O[X]] [/X | [/F] [/C]] [/B] [/U[:scriptfile]]
       [/R[X]:directory] [/E:command]

/S[:]sourcepath
        Specifies the source location of Windows NT files.
        Must be a full path of the form x:\[path] or
        \\server\share[\path].
        The default is the current directory.
/T[:]tempdrive
        Specifies a drive to contain temporary setup files.
        If not specified, Setup will attempt to locate a drive for you.
/I[:]inffile
        Specifies the filename (no path) of the setup information file.
        The default is DOSNET.INF.
/OX    Create boot floppies for CD-ROM installation.
/X     Do not create the Setup boot floppies.
/F     Do not verify files as they are copied to the Setup boot floppies.
/C     Skip free-space check on the Setup boot floppies you provide.
/B     Floppyless operation (requires /s).
/U     Unattended operation and optional script file (requires /s).
/R     Specifies optional directory to be installed.
/RX    Specifies optional directory to be copied.
/E     Specifies command to be executed at the end of GUI setup.


The advantage of installing this way is by copying the I386 directory to
your hard drive and then installing from that folder, you will never again
be asked to insert your windows install CD.

Rode
The NOSPIN Group
http://freepctech.com

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