Installing Windows XP Efficiently from a USB Drive
Ok, so when I install Windows XP (Yes, people still want it installed…) I always do it quickly from a USB drive. People keep asking me “David, how the heck did you install XP that quickly?” So today I will write out my steps for efficiently installing Windows XP. This is by no means the ONLY way to install Windows XP from a USB drive, but in my experience this is the FASTEST and most RELIABLE.
Materials:
- USB Drive (At least 4 Gigs, more is better!)
- Windows XP install disk/iso/exe (I use Professional, but whatever you have should work)
- A 32-bit (x86) Windows 7 install disk/iso/exe (Yes, Windows 7, no you won’t be using it to install windows… but you could… if you use a 64-bit version, you will encounter problems…)
- A Windows XP+ machine to work on (Sorry mac users, this has to be done from windows)
- 7-Zip file manager portable (download from the googles or from here)
Prep Procedure:
- Prepare the XP installation files. If you have an iso/exe… well you’re done! yay! If you have a disk…
- Select the contents of the disk and compress them into a single file such as a .zip or .iso or .7z
- Insert your USB Drive… make sure you don’t have any data you want to keep on it.
- Open an administrative command prompt (if on Windows XP just make sure you’re in an administrator account)
- type: diskpart [Enter]
- type: list disk [Enter]
- Find your USB drive in the list, I will refer to it’s disk number as ‘#’ from here on out
- type: select disk # [Enter]
- type: clean [Enter] (This will remove all partition information from the drive)
- type: create partition primary [Enter]
- type: format quick fs=ntfs [Enter]
- LEAVE THIS WINDOW OPEN but leave it for now…
- type: diskpart [Enter]
- Copy the contents of the Windows 7 Install media to the root of the USB Drive. (There should be a bunch of folder… boot, sources, etc… setup.exe should be at the root of the drive)
- Once that’s complete, go back to the command prompt that you left open
- type: active [Enter]
- type: exit [Enter]
- Ok, you can close the prompt now 🙂
- Ok, congratulations, you now have a bootable Windows 7 Install USB Drive!
- Wait… wasn’t this post about Windows XP?… yea… ok, so a few more steps then…
- Copy your Windows XP iso/zip/exe to the USB Drive
- Install 7-Zip Portable to the USB Drive
- Create a new file on the root of the USB Drive called “installXP.bat” with the following line: “C:\winxp\i386\winnt32.exe /makelocalsource /tempdrive:c: /syspart:c:” (no quotes of course)
- Ok, you now have a Windows XP/Windows 7 Install USB… yay!
Install Procedure:
- Boot off of your shiny new Windows Install USB
- Once you’ve selected your keyboard layout use the keyboard combo “shift+f10” to open a command prompt
- type: diskpart [Enter]
- type: list volume [Enter]
- Note which volume is your USB Drive… I’ll be referring to it as the “E” drive
- type: list disk [Enter]
- Note which disk is your destination drive (the one you want XP on). I’ll be calling it “disk #”… sounds familiar…
- type: select disk # [Enter]
- type: clean [Enter]
- type: create partition primary [Enter]
- type: format quick fs=ntfs [Enter]
- All this really sounds familiar…
- type: assign letter=c [Enter] (It’s important that this succeeds, we need it to be the “C” drive…)
- type: active [Enter]
- type: exit [Enter]
- type: E: [Enter] (or whatever letter your USB stick happens to be)
- type: 7-ZipPortable\7-ZipPortable.exe [Enter] (Don’t forget to use the tab key to auto-complete!)
- Use 7-zip to navigate to your XP install zip/win/7z/exe/tar/gz and double-click on it, you should have a listing of all the files that make up the windows XP disk.
- Select all the files (ctrl+a), right-click, choose “copy to” and in the dialogue put “C:\winxp” and choose OK
- Ok, you can quit 7-Zip… head back to the open command prompt…
- type: installXP.bat [Enter] (This will start the Windows XP installer assuming you copied everything in the right place…)
- Follow the instructions to begin the Windows XP install.
- Once it’s done it’s thing, the Windows XP installer will simply quit/disappear with no errors/popups/warnings
- Go back to the command prompt and type: wpeutil shutdown [Enter] This will shut down the machine.
- type: diskpart [Enter]
- Remove the USB drive and boot the computer, it will boot into a Windows XP setup environment
- Just hit Enter whenever it asks you something and it will complete the final stages of setup then reboot into the usual XP installer
- You’re on your own from here… but don’t forget to delete the “C:\winxp” folder once you’ve got everything installed…
- You’re Done! congrats on an XP install… takes a bit of setup, but is much faster than other methods… enjoy.
If you have any questions or encounter problems with this method, feel free to leave a comment or email me (as always 🙂