Install Windows XP Without CD Drive

[TyKoN]

The CD drive on my computer is old and cheap so now its not reading very reliably. I´m trying to install Windows XP onto a clean hard drive but every time some file ends up being corrupted because the CD drive cant read it correctly. Is there any way to install without a CD drive? I have an external hard drive, a thumb stick, and another computer with a working hard drive if those could be of any use.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks for looking.

Oh, and I´m currently running Ubuntu on the computer if that helps.

 

[mechBgon]

You're going to want some sort of optical drive on the computer eventually, right? Why not just run out to the local computer store and pick up a new DVD burner or something?

If you can't do that, search Microsoft.com for "Windows XP Floppy Installation" and you should find the utility to make boot floppies.

 

[thescreensavers]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
You're going to want some sort of optical drive on the computer eventually, right? Why not just run out to the local computer store and pick up a new DVD burner or something?

If you can't do that, search Microsoft.com for "Windows XP Floppy Installation" and you should find the utility to make boot floppies.

if you do use the floppies then make sure you got around 300 floppies and have a ton of time on hand.


Much easier to go to the store and get a cd drive

 

[TyKoN]

Well of course I´ve already thought of buying a new CD drive, but thats not really an option for me right now. I will get a CD drive later on though.

 

[rudder]

make a small install partition. copy xp files there. boot to dos. cd to xp files directory. run setup.

You can put the clean HD in the working system and copy the files at that point.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'd likely just pull a working CD drive from the other computer for the install process. Once you get XP running on the PC, you can use a network to access a working CD drive in either PC.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I'd likely just pull a working CD drive from the other computer for the install process. Once you get XP running on the PC, you can use a network to access a working CD drive in either PC.

Yep, that would make the most sense..just borrow the CD rom from the other computer..I mean you can't expect to install files from a CD without putting it in a working cdrom at some point..

 

[Trashman]

I'd also add, if you able copy the xp cd to your hard drive, then you would think, you'd be able to install off that cd as well, wouldn't ya??

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Trashman
I'd also add, if you able copy the xp cd to your hard drive, then you would think, you'd be able to install off that cd as well, wouldn't ya??

I wasn't going to say anything....

You COULD go into DOS mode from a floppy and copy the XP files across a network (assuming you have CD-ROM and NIC drivers for DOS), but it would take a while.

 

[sonoma1993]

you could try doing a network install of windows xp.

http://www.networkcert.net/xp/install.htm#network

 

[Navid]

You need a working CD drive. Not necessarily on the computer you are installing on. But, you need a working one.

If your other PC has a CD drive and if your flash drive is larger than 512MB, you can use those to create a bootable XP flash drive.

The master optical drive is one of the hardware units that affect the hardware hash that XP uses to decide, over time, if you have modified the system enough to require an XP reactivation. So, if this is an OEM XP, I would not activate it until I got the optical drive I want to use.

 

[O2Deprived]

Not to mention it's probably cheaper to buy a dvd drive ($30 on newegg) than the number of floppies it would take.