Can I use a usb jump drive to install ata133 drivers during XP install?

[de8212]

I'm going to be installing XP on a new machine pretty soon. I will use my Promise ATA 133 controller card for my main HD. Normally I press F6 during bootup to install the drivers for the card from my floppy disk. Is there any way I can just put the drivers on a USB jump drive or any other way then to put the floppy in the machine?

 

[Trashman]

I'd doubt that you would need drivers for the controller. XP would detect that card just fine.

 

[de8212]

It's been a while since I installed XP but I specifically remembered that the drivers XP installed didn;t find the card or something. When I installed the ones from the floppy it went just fine.

Anyway, my question is really about using a USB drive rather than the floppy.
Can it be done?

 

[tweeve2002]

if your bios supports booting to USB it might....My Bios lets me use my USB drive as A: so i can use it as a floppy. if your Bios does something simmler it just might work.

 

[Trashman]

I personally haven't tried such a thing, but i'd have to say no, being in a DOS enviroment, you'd have no usb support.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I don't think so.

 

[Jeff7]

If memory serves from reading forum posts of floppy-drive-less PC users, WinXP seems hardcoded to look at A: for drivers.

Might be a dumb question, but did you try just going through Windows setup and see if it can see the drive by itself? Since you didn't mention anything special like RAID, WinXP's setup might be able to see the drive.
Edit: Ah, I see now you said something about this in one of the posts. Oops.

Just don't do what I did once and install on the first drive Windows recommends - it won't be the one on the controller.😉

 

[Trashman]

Could even try slipstreaming SP2 with your XP cd? if that promise controller wasn't supported then, it would have w/SP2, you'd think.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Alternately, you could just slipstream the the promise controller drivers into the CD.