DISQUS

Andy-JM · 5 years ago

i found that this method worked for the first part of installation in DOS- copying the files from the i386 folder in preparation, however after restarting and continuing with the installation, it seemed to only want to read from the windows xp cd which was in the drive at the time, so i think maybe once it detected it it wouldnt read the files from the hard drive anymore :( . XP installed fine and i can see how this could help someone who was constantly reformatting, i just tried it to see if it worked. :D

deed · 4 months ago

That's just because your BIOS had the CD drive as a higher priority than your HDD. When it saw a bootable disc in the CD drive it started loading from that rather than the HDD.

Anonymous · 4 years ago

<ul id="quote"><h6>Andy-JM wrote:</h6>i found that this method worked for the first part of installation in DOS- copying the files from the i386 folder in preparation, however after restarting and continuing with the installation, it seemed to only want to read from the windows xp cd which was in the drive at the time, so i think maybe once it detected it it wouldnt read the files from the hard drive anymore :( . XP installed fine and i can see how this could help someone who was constantly reformatting, i just tried it to see if it worked. :D</ul>

anil1972 · 4 years ago

what if i have to install xp form a NTFS partition, i.e., my XP CD files are on the partition of hard disk with NTFS files system. How do i access the NTFS partion from DOS prompt.

If any one can tell me the solution to this, i will be really greatful.

Anonymous · 4 years ago

<ul id="quote"><h6>anil1972 wrote:</h6>what if i have to install xp form a NTFS partition, i.e., my XP CD files are on the partition of hard disk with NTFS files system. How do i access the NTFS partion from DOS prompt.

If any one can tell me the solution to this, i will be really greatful.</ul>

Three choices. (No.3 is the best)

1.) Change NTFS file format to FAT32. Can destroy existing data on partition - depending on how it's done.

2.) Create a small FAT32 partition and move the CD files there. You only need the i386 folder - and all sub-folders within i386. You'll need about 600MB of free space for this "i386" partition. BTW DOS possibly won't use the same drive letters as windows. And Partitioning is MUCH easier with almost any 3rd party partitioning program rather than using a windows/dos boot floppy or cd.

3.) Get the NTFSDOS bootdisk. The free version cannot write to NTFS, but you only need to read from the NTFS partition. Use it like DOS. Not sure if it needs (or can even use) smartdrive - but you'll know if the install seems to freeze for hours. IIRC NTFSDOS includes support for lots of good stuff like long file names and large hdds etc.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdos.shtml

daver
--

William Wilson · 4 years ago

I have a Dell Latitude csx, with a minimal setup (no floppy, no cd) The closest i got to installing was with dos on the c: partition and a copy of the xp cd on d:. When dos loads i run the winnt.exe from the cd and it starts copying files, but it freezes after several files are copied. If i restart the laptop, it loads the proper setup, but after pressing enter, it says that it cannot find the EULA (End User License Agreement). If anyone has any ideas on:

1) how to install from the harddrive only
2) why setup freezes
3) why setup cannot find EULA
4) where i could get an external floppy drive that is type 1 or 2, and not USB

it would be greatly appreciated!!!!
I have tried all ideas i have found, including bootable XP cd, copying i386 folder, and using a winnt.sif file to try and bypass the EULA.

Anonymous · 4 years ago

first of all, how are you getting to dos without a floppy drive?

second, I also am trying this on a dell latitude without a cdrom drive and it appears that setup freezes but then comes back to life if I leave it alone for a good 5 minutes even with Smartdrv.exe loaded.

after it finishes installing in the dos portion of setup it asks for a reboot. I reboot and it boots to my other NTFS file system I have on the computer.

I'm currently using a win98 recovery bootdisk to get to dos in the first place which is only mapping one of my partions (the only FAT32 one) as drive C: The other drive, which still contains data and is a NTFS does not get mapped probably because dos can't read NTFS.

do I need to format this partion first as a FAT32 before I'm allowed to install XP on it?

Does WINNT.exe even ask you if you have multiple partitions where you want to install XP to as it does if you install normally from the CD?

William Wilson · 4 years ago

yes, you must format to FAT32, you can always switch it to ntfs later, with a prog such as partition magic. I installed xp on my latitude csx (no cd or floppy drive) with the following steps:

- put the harddrive into desktop PC (buy part, suggested: www.tigerdirect.ca)
- Format Drive to FAT32
- Copy I386 folder from WinXP cd onto the drive
- put smartdrv.exe on drive
- install dos 7.10 on drive
- put the harddrive back in the laptop

- load dos
- run smartdrv.exe (speeds up dos transers)
- run C:I386winnt.exe
- let sit, even if it appears to stall
- that's it

you will now have dos and windows on the drive, you can remove dos, or leave it, it is up to you!!

William Wilson · 4 years ago

Yes i realize that i answered my own post, but i have seen this question quite often, and for less than $30 for the laptop to IDE conversion part, all your problems can be solved, as DOS 7.10 and smartdrv are free.

davak · 4 years ago

William Wilson --

Can you or I create a recipe out of this?

By creating a recipe we can get it out of the forums... and people will find it through google much, much easier.

If you would like to add it as a recipe yourself, add it here:
Submit recipe

If you don't want to become a member, submit the recipe, blah, blah, blah... I'll be glad to it instead.

Thanks for helping these guys out.

William Wilson · 4 years ago

Sure, i'd be more than happy to add it!

davak · 4 years ago

<ul id="quote"><h6>William Wilson wrote:</h6>Sure, i'd be more than happy to add it!</ul>

Thanks! Just validated it!

Anonymous · 4 years ago

this was exactly what i was looking for. ii have a copy of xp but do not want to damage it. thanks a million works great.

Anonymous · 4 years ago

Hello,

Can you please let me know where to search for Dos 7.1. Will Dos 6.22 version work with your procedure. I haven't tried it still.

Thanks
kris



<ul id="quote"><h6>William Wilson wrote:</h6>yes, you must format to FAT32, you can always switch it to ntfs later, with a prog such as partition magic. I installed xp on my latitude csx (no cd or floppy drive) with the following steps:

- put the harddrive into desktop PC (buy part, suggested: www.tigerdirect.ca)
- Format Drive to FAT32
- Copy I386 folder from WinXP cd onto the drive
- put smartdrv.exe on drive
- install dos 7.10 on drive
- put the harddrive back in the laptop

- load dos
- run smartdrv.exe (speeds up dos transers)
- run C:I386winnt.exe
- let sit, even if it appears to stall
- that's it

you will now have dos and windows on the drive, you can remove dos, or leave it, it is up to you!!</ul>

Anonymous · 3 years ago

<ul id="quote"><h6>William Wilson wrote:</h6>
- install dos 7.10 on drive</ul>

I could understand everything except how to install DOS 7 on the hard drive when it is connected to the Desktop. Where is the best place to get Dos7?

b-man · 3 years ago

I have tried this a couple of times and here is what I did. Install DOS 7.10 from a different laptop, switched hard drive to other laptop and ran winnt.exe. Everything is fine to this point. However, when the system is done installing all of the XP files it tries to reboot and gives me an NTLDR is missing error.

Any suggestions on what to do at this point?

JAE · 3 years ago

Very nice instructions, it worked like a charm. The only trouble I had was finding DOS and Installing on hard drive. ended up doing it thru win 3.1 :P

Anonymous · 3 years ago

It does not work for me. Afer I type in winnt and it finishes copying files and says it is done and will restart and start installing windows I get boot errors. Either missing operating system or ntldr is missing. Seems like it is not making the partition bootable. I even tried format c: /s several times and still nothing.

William_Wilson · 3 years ago

The recipe written to solve this issue is here:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_installation_tips870.html
it also includes an e-mail where i can be reached,
cheers.
-William. §

Anonymous · 3 years ago

I figured out what was wrong. Boot files was on a ntfs partition and could not delete them since win9x cant see ntfs. Every time the computer would startup it would try to bootup to that ntfs partition that had the boot files to it. Since I could not get to the files and delete them, I formatted that partition and then it worked. Thank you for your help though.

Anonymous · 3 years ago

ok this is my problem... i have this laptop... the cd rom doesnt works... and ia have to format and reinstall windows... i have a usb cd rom but the bios does not allow me to make it a boot device... i made two partitions on this laptop some time ago, c: and d:

i have copied windows installation cd from the usb cd rom to d: and i have a win98 se floppy boot disk... i tried to do this recipie, but when i load the floppy disk it doesnt allows me to acces d:

i tried downloading the xp startup disks... made the 6 of them... but a file keeps sending an error...

i dunno what else to do, and i dont want to remove the hd from the laptop... any ideas?

plz help

Anonymous · 2 years ago

monsfa if your still tracking this forum I'll try to help

If your not set on NTFS and your laptop HD is not bigger than 64GB because I have had some trouble with larger hard drives, but use this suggestion at your own risk

BTW there are some lines you will want to have in your Config.Sys and Autoexec.bat on your boot disk

Config.Sys

Device = A:DosHimem.Sys /Verbose /Testmem:Off
DeviceHigh = A:DosEmm386.Exe Verbose
Files = 50
Buffers = 50,0
Dos = High
Fcbs = 16,0
Dos = Umb
Stacks = 9,256

Now I used Dos because I have all my files in a Dos folder on my boot disk you will need to modify this to match however do not delete any lines in either the config or auto just add as needed

Autoexec.bat

@Echo Off
Path A:Dos
Lh A:DosSmartdrv.Exe /V /X
Prompt $p$g

Reboot 98SE, run fdisk & rebuild your partitions, since you have created 2 drives before I am assuming you are some what familiar with this process, lets use 40gb as our example

I suggest 3 drives C, D, E - Make C 10GB, Make D 25GB this would be for all personal storage, then make E 5GB this would be solely for the format & reload process and storage of those needed files. Now these are approx sizes fdisk will make some slight changes in the numbers and you may not have a full 5 for E

Once you have built the 3 of course format all of them

Once that is done type sys A: C:, then repeat this with sys A: E: this is going to give you the option to format and reload without having to boot with a disk

At the a: prompt type E:, you want to make 2 folders
Type Mkdir Dos and Mkdir Winxp

Now Go to C: and make a dos folder go back to A: look at the structure of A this is just an assumption but I am going to bet all the filles are in the root of the disk and there are no directories which is fine, now keep in mind my next suggestion as well as my earlier will require require you to make path changes in the config & auto

Type Xcopy32 Au*.* C:, Then Xcopy32 Con*.* C:, Then Type Xcopy32 /e /y *.* E:Dos this will also give you a 3rd copy of your config and auto should you need a reference

Then go to the C: type edit & open the config.sys & autoexec.bat and modify all lines to reference any paths to E:Dos

Type Xcopy32 Au*.* E:, Then Xcopy32 Con*.* E:, now go to your cdrom at this time it should be F: Type Xcopy32 /e /y *.* E:WinXp

Reboot and you should now be booted to C

At this Time go to E: and edit both the config & auto delete all lines expcept for the ones I posted and make sure all lines reference E:Dos as the path in the config sys additionaly delete the emm386 line and in the autoexec.bat add this line to be last E:WinXpi386winnt.exe

Save both and exit

Now we need to make a new bat file type Edit reload.bat in this your going to need to add these lines

@Echo Off
E:
Cd
Path E:Dos
E:Command.Com E: /E:1024 /P /C
Format C: /V:C_Drive /Q - /V:C_Drive labels C but not required

Sys E: C:

Label D: D_Drive = Also Labels but not required
Label E: E_Drive

Deltree /Y D:Recycled - Personal Preference for a Cleaner Install
Deltree /Y E:Recycled
Deltree /Y D:System~1
Deltree /Y E:System~1

Cd

Xcopy32 Au*.* C:
Xcopy32 Con*.* C:

Now save and exit

From here you should be ready to start, type reload at the prompt once complete reboot and you should be on your way

There are a few things to keep in mind, I've tried to be as complete as I can but you may have to fill in some blanks, and once xp is installed you should have 2 OS options in the boot menu 1 for XP and the other for Microsoft Windows if you choose this because you want to format and reload remeber you added E:WinXpi386winnt.exe to the autoexec.bat in your C: and you will not be given the option to run the reload.bat on your E: drive, you can work around this with alternate files to copy to C: and rename you will have to decide on how you would like to do this, lastly if DOS and .bat files are foriegn to you, you may not want to try this

Anonymous · 2 years ago

BTW if you are into unattended installs like I am this process will give you great opportunities to tweak and change you unattended without VMware and burning up bootable cd's

Also it will let you see the real results of your change as sometimes I know what works in VM does not work when you use the bootable cd

The down side is that you have to wait until the PC is reloaded and if you jack it to bad you have to do all your editing from dos to undo the changes but the pc is dual bootable based on my process

Yes I am aware that MS advises against this as a practice for OS stability, I have never had any issues with stability, but if you F/R regularly as I do the instability comes more from jerking around than from this process

Holger · 12 months ago

installing microxp via that, dont have CDS right now, thanks

KB · 9 months ago

Hello there,

I need some help pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Here is my problem, right after formatting drive C, I typed " cd d: " then D:\ popped up for a second then it went back to A:\

So it seems like i can NOT access drive D for some reason

some please help, I don't know what is going on ?????

redeng · 9 months ago

Thank u .It's very usefule and important to me becaus i ahve old pc without cd rom but i well install a freedos on by buting the hdd in another machine then boot from it, ihope this workes and iwell post you
thank u v m

MTA · 6 months ago

use the Hirens boot CD for NTFS Dos and all other Tools mostly used in DOS
like partition magic , File manager , etc .............

can give you downlaod link Mail me

Oliver · 5 months ago

Hi, i have tried these steps but i have a sata hdd and the 98 se floppy will not recognise it

cyrus · 5 months ago

this is what im looking for, but i suggest you guys provide the smartdrv.exe software coz the link you had provided is not free,. :)

rey · 4 months ago

thank you dude..it's cool
I am trying it now.

Sharoon · 4 months ago

Hey heres waht im tryna do !! i got the new windows 7 iso all extracted n all.... n i wanna install it clean onto my desktop but it dont have a dvd in it n im not buyin one either!! lolz....anyhow i made a startup usb disc coz i dont have a floppy drive too!!! :) i know im outa resources here!! so i got the windows 7 folder in another hdd on my pc...i got a master n a slave btw!! and i was thinkin how can i install it on my c drive....i got the windows files on d drive...coz 98 start up in dos is not recognizing the ntfs file system...does it mean im gonna have to format it n then try this on fat file sys??!!! sombody point me in the rite direction plz

mplo · 4 months ago

after setup files were copied, it prompted reboot and removal of the boot disk. problem was, hard drive can't boot.. "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" appears.. HELP

soulkla · 3 months ago

Thanks very much ! you saved me ..... your solution works perfectly....

phunk · 2 months ago

How to fix the "DISK BOOT FAILURE" after the DOS - part of the install.
Right after formatting load F-Disk and set the C: Drive as 'active'
It's in the menu of F-Disk, just look for it.
It will allow windows to boot from C: and continue the installation.
You have to do this before the start of the installation by running 'winnt'
It was a lifesaver for me....;-)

soulkla · 2 months ago

You Have to SET your HDD to 2 or more Partition...
You'll also need to set the Active Partition of MS-DOS OS... from the F-disk Menu
I set it to C:
and put my WinXp Installation Files on D:

ijstyles · 1 day ago

Worked like charm in my pc though I have to do a lot of troubleshooting. Thanks