Installing XP Without Network or CDROM Support
Have you ever ran across a computer (primarily laptop) that you can’t install XP because it doesn’t have a CDROM drive, no NIC, and can’t boot from USB? This might be a rare situation, but you might still run across it. You could say, “Couldn’t you just put in a CDROM drive?” Some laptop have proprietary drives and they may be hard to get a hold of and sometimes not all PCMCIA NICs will work for installs. It would appear you are stuck with no way to Install XP on the laptop. Alas, I have the solution. (Note: this method may work for 9x, ME, 2K as well, but may need a bit of tweaking.)
1) You need to remove the HDD and attach it directly to a desktop machine (using a 2.5″ to 3.5″ IDE adapter or just an SATA cable as required.)
2) Once attached, you’re going to need to find a Windows 9x boot CD, whether it’s 95, 98, 98SE, or ME, it doesn’t matter.
3) You’re going to need to boot that machine off the CD so you can fdisk/format that laptop drive and then transfer the 9x bootloader over to it with the sys command. Preferably when you boot the machine off the 9x CD, you only want that one hard drive attached. This method may not/most likely will not work if the drive is attached using a USB/Firewire external housing – it has to be directly attached to the IDE or SATA controller on the mobo, and it must be the only hard drive in the system.
4) With the 9x CD in the drive, and the laptop drive attached to the IDE or SATA controller, boot the machine WITH CD-ROM SUPPORT – this is critical as you must be able to access the CD in the drive to get a file from it.
5) Fdisk the laptop drive, create the partition(s) as you wish, then format them all (if you create more than 1 partition, you will need to format at least the C: partition, meaning the first one so you can accomplish the next step, and obviously it must be FAT32 (the 9x CDs don’t allow for NTFS so… you can convert the file system later on, it’s not an issue at this point.)
6) After creating and formatting that C: drive/partition, you need to use the sys C: command to transfer the boot code and necessary system files to that laptop drive (you can’t manually do this, it has to be done with the sys C: command, there’s just no getting around it)
7) Once that’s done, and the command says “System transferred successfully.” you’ll need to go into the last drive – it’ll be the RAMdisk that got created when you booted the CD using CD-ROM support. It could be drive E:, F:, etc but most likely it will be E: since the laptop drive is C: and the optical drive is D:. Anyway, cd to E: and find the smartdrv.exe file – you will need this or the XP installation could take hours, seriously. Copy the smartdrv.exe file to C: with copy smartdrv.exe C: and verify it’s actually on the C: drive before you continue.
8 ) You also need to copy the himem.sys file from the A: drive – that’s the CD itself, the root folder – from A: to C:. cd to A:, copy himem.sys C: and you’re done. Verify that the C: drive has 3 files on it visible:
command.com (system file created with the sys C: command)
himem.sys (you copied it there manually)
smartdrv.exe (you copied it there manually)
9) Eject the CD from the optical drive and boot that machine off that hard drive. If it works, you’ll know it because you’ll be staring at a C: prompt in a few seconds, most likely less than a second. If you don’t see the C: prompt, if it gets stuck and you just see a blinking cursor, you missed something or it needs to be done again, and again till it gets done correctly.
10) Once you can boot off that laptop drive to a C: prompt, you can then re-attach the system’s normal drives, you’re done with what you can do that method so far.
11) Once the system is back up and running with the normal OS (we’re talking about the Desktop machine, still), you can then copy the entire i386 directory from the XP installation CD to that drive (it won’t be C: anymore, but the drive letter doesn’t matter). Just copy that entire i386 folder to that drive so it should only contain two files in the root: command.com and the smartdrv.exe file you copied, but you’ll need one more file you can now create.
12) Create a file called config.sys using Notepad on that laptop drive and it should have one single line in it:
device=himem.sys /testmem=off
Save that file, make sure the filename is config.sys and not config.sys.txt – it MUST be config.sys.
13) When all is said and done, that laptop drive will have 4 files in root:
command.com
config.sys
himem.sys
smartdrv.exe
and one directory:
i386
14) Power down the desktop, put the drive back in the laptop, and power it up. If all went according to the plan, the laptop should boot to the C: prompt without issues. If it does, type smartdrv.exe and press Enter. Type smartdrv.exe again and press Enter again – the SmartDrv cache will show statistics and that way you’re ensured that it’s running.
15) If it is, congrats, you’re almost done. cd to i386 and run winnt.exe. That starts the XP installation manually, and you should know what you’re doing from that point on.
Enjoy your XP Install
1) You need to remove the HDD and attach it directly to a desktop machine (using a 2.5″ to 3.5″ IDE adapter or just an SATA cable as required.)
2) Once attached, you’re going to need to find a Windows 9x boot CD, whether it’s 95, 98, 98SE, or ME, it doesn’t matter.
3) You’re going to need to boot that machine off the CD so you can fdisk/format that laptop drive and then transfer the 9x bootloader over to it with the sys command. Preferably when you boot the machine off the 9x CD, you only want that one hard drive attached. This method may not/most likely will not work if the drive is attached using a USB/Firewire external housing – it has to be directly attached to the IDE or SATA controller on the mobo, and it must be the only hard drive in the system.
4) With the 9x CD in the drive, and the laptop drive attached to the IDE or SATA controller, boot the machine WITH CD-ROM SUPPORT – this is critical as you must be able to access the CD in the drive to get a file from it.
5) Fdisk the laptop drive, create the partition(s) as you wish, then format them all (if you create more than 1 partition, you will need to format at least the C: partition, meaning the first one so you can accomplish the next step, and obviously it must be FAT32 (the 9x CDs don’t allow for NTFS so… you can convert the file system later on, it’s not an issue at this point.)
6) After creating and formatting that C: drive/partition, you need to use the sys C: command to transfer the boot code and necessary system files to that laptop drive (you can’t manually do this, it has to be done with the sys C: command, there’s just no getting around it)
7) Once that’s done, and the command says “System transferred successfully.” you’ll need to go into the last drive – it’ll be the RAMdisk that got created when you booted the CD using CD-ROM support. It could be drive E:, F:, etc but most likely it will be E: since the laptop drive is C: and the optical drive is D:. Anyway, cd to E: and find the smartdrv.exe file – you will need this or the XP installation could take hours, seriously. Copy the smartdrv.exe file to C: with copy smartdrv.exe C: and verify it’s actually on the C: drive before you continue.
8 ) You also need to copy the himem.sys file from the A: drive – that’s the CD itself, the root folder – from A: to C:. cd to A:, copy himem.sys C: and you’re done. Verify that the C: drive has 3 files on it visible:
command.com (system file created with the sys C: command)
himem.sys (you copied it there manually)
smartdrv.exe (you copied it there manually)
9) Eject the CD from the optical drive and boot that machine off that hard drive. If it works, you’ll know it because you’ll be staring at a C: prompt in a few seconds, most likely less than a second. If you don’t see the C: prompt, if it gets stuck and you just see a blinking cursor, you missed something or it needs to be done again, and again till it gets done correctly.
10) Once you can boot off that laptop drive to a C: prompt, you can then re-attach the system’s normal drives, you’re done with what you can do that method so far.
11) Once the system is back up and running with the normal OS (we’re talking about the Desktop machine, still), you can then copy the entire i386 directory from the XP installation CD to that drive (it won’t be C: anymore, but the drive letter doesn’t matter). Just copy that entire i386 folder to that drive so it should only contain two files in the root: command.com and the smartdrv.exe file you copied, but you’ll need one more file you can now create.
12) Create a file called config.sys using Notepad on that laptop drive and it should have one single line in it:
device=himem.sys /testmem=off
Save that file, make sure the filename is config.sys and not config.sys.txt – it MUST be config.sys.
13) When all is said and done, that laptop drive will have 4 files in root:
command.com
config.sys
himem.sys
smartdrv.exe
and one directory:
i386
14) Power down the desktop, put the drive back in the laptop, and power it up. If all went according to the plan, the laptop should boot to the C: prompt without issues. If it does, type smartdrv.exe and press Enter. Type smartdrv.exe again and press Enter again – the SmartDrv cache will show statistics and that way you’re ensured that it’s running.
15) If it is, congrats, you’re almost done. cd to i386 and run winnt.exe. That starts the XP installation manually, and you should know what you’re doing from that point on.
Enjoy your XP Install
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