[Tutorial]Installing XP from a pendrive.

Neuron · 29-04-2011, 01:51 AM

Well ,this is a totally new method for installing Windows XP from a usb drive and this must be the most simplest and most successful method for doing it.I modified a method used to install Windows 7 to facilitate XP installation and this is my first tutorial ever.For this to work you'll need a pendrive having a capacity of atleast 1GB.

Things you will need.

1.Download the bootable part of Windows 7 image from here.
2.Download EasyBCD from here
3.The entire i386 folder of XP that you are going to install.

Alright so here are the steps.

1.Format your pendrive.Then copy the above Windows 7 image,EasyBCD and the i386 folder into the drive.

2.Install and open EasyBCD.

3.Click Bootloader setup.
Under the Create External Bootable Media section,select your pendrive as the partition.and then click Install BCD.
When this process is successfully done a dialogue box will appear asking of you want to change the current BCD store to the newly created one.Click yes.

4.Now if you click Edit Boot Menuyou'll see that the boot menu is empty.It should be if step 3 went well.
Click 'Add New Entry'.
Under Portable/External Media section,select the Iso Boot tab.
Click the browse button right toPath and select the Windows 7 image on the pendrive.
Check mark Force Portable Entry. and finally click Add Entry.
If everything went well, after this process is completed you should be able to see a new entry under the Edit Boot Menu Section.
Now your pendrive is bootable.

NOTE:To boot from the pendrive the BIOS of the target system must support booting from USB devices.If it does ,during post choose to boot from the pendrive or give booting from usb the highest priority under the boot section of the BIOS.

5.When booting from the usb,you will get a message like 'Press any key to boot from the dvd'.Just press any key and windows 7 setup will load(We are going to run Windows XP setup by means of Windows 7 setup program.)

6.While Windows 7 setup is loading keep the ctrl key pressed.This is very important.
Since the ctrl key was pressed you will get a cmd window when Windows 7 finishes loading.

7.Follow this step only if the target system has no windows bootloader installed.If you already have Windows 7 or Vista installed skip this step.
This step is used to write the windows bootloader to the MBR.
Enter x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 c: (Replace x with the drive letter shown in the cmd.)

8.Now to start Windows XP setup enter y:\i386\winnt32.exe(Replace y with the drive letter of the usb drive.This will definitely be different from the drive letter used in step 7.That's it,Xp setup will start,after copying the necessary files for installation it will restart and continue the installation.

NOTE:If you already had any Windows 7 or Vista installations,you will notice that the XP installation will overwrite the nt60(bootloader used by win7&vista)by nt52(that of xp).Don't panic,you can multiboot entry for the newly installed XP and the 'already present' OS once you finish the Xp installation using EasyBCD as described below.

9.Install and open EasyBCD in xp.
Goto Bootloader setup.
Under MBR configuration options Check mark Windows 7/Vista bootloader to the MBR. and press Write MBR.
Goto Add New Entry.Under Operating Systems section and Windows tab,select Windows NT/2k/Xp/2k3 from the drop box.
Uncheck Automatically detect correct drive.Select the correct drive from the drop box and click Add Entry.Check under Edit Boot Menu to see if the desire boot entries are present.

And that's it.Thanks

cute.bandar · 29-04-2011, 02:10 AM

isn't it just simpler to use wintoflash Or Sardu ? to make a bootable xp installation media ? or am i missing something

Neuron · 29-04-2011, 02:16 AM

Well, I did try that.It was giving some BSOD error before entering setup.I also tried methods like creating RAM disks and such.None of them worked form me.