Tech-Recipes - Latest Comments in Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

mplo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:40:11 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

deed — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:04:30 -0000

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.

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Sharoon — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:52:51 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

rey — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:31:41 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

cyrus — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:54:59 -0000

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,. :)

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Oliver — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:44:57 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

MTA — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:34:36 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

redeng — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:06:48 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

KB — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:01:56 -0000

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 ?????

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Holger — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:23:25 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:45:48 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:29:37 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:32:05 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 01:33:54 -0000

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.

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

William_Wilson — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:44:44 -0000

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. §

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:40:38 -0000

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.

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

JAE — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 04:11:13 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

b-man — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 15:51:02 -0000

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?

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:49:28 -0000

<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?

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:19:41 -0000

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>

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

Anonymous — Wed, 04 May 2005 17:13:24 -0000

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.

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

davak — Mon, 02 May 2005 04:30:36 -0000

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

Thanks! Just validated it!

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

William Wilson — Mon, 02 May 2005 01:39:36 -0000

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

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

davak — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:37:42 -0000

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.

Re: Windows XP: Installing from Harddrive | Windows installation | Tech-Recipes

William Wilson — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:04:57 -0000

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.