Installing Windows XP From Hard Disk

[Biomorphic]

After installing Windows, you always have to search for your driver CDs, program CDs, game CDs, etc. to put the system up and running with all your desired software. As for me, I have already created a partition on my hard disk where I have copied my drivers, programs, games, etc. and after installing Windows I just get everything installed from the other partition. This is to save time and also to avoid the hassle of putting and removing CDs from the optical drive each and everytime.

However, this time around, I wanted to know if there is a way of installing Windows XP directly from a different partition or hard disk if the contents of the installation CD are copied there.

I did a Google search but I could not find anything for helping me out. Is there anybody with some ideas about my question?

 

[htne]

Do you really install XP that often? If so, then you should look into an imaging program. (My recommendation would be Acronis True Image, but there are others.) Restoring your system from an image would be much faster, and require no loading of drivers, etc. And your image can be on another partition of your hard drive, just boot from the Acronis True Image cd, and run restore, pointing at your saved image.

 

[Biomorphic]

I guess you are telling me to do kind of a restoration of the operating system. If that is the case then my motherboard already comes with such a software but what I want is a clean (fresh or new) install directly from the hard disk, if it is possible though. Any suggestion?

 

[Raincity]

You could try to copy the contents of your XP disc to the drive then build a boot cd with DOS and some utility to read NTFS and try it that way. I copied the XP CD once to the hardrive and tried to run the WINNT installer from a command line from the repair console with no luck. I ran into some file permissions problem and just gave up.