USB Drive Use In Installation of XP 64bit

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Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
0
I have an nLited XP 64bit CD. I don't have any other CDs to copy over to, but I have a 4GB USB flash drive.

I am having a hard time finding stores that either sell floppy drives or external floppy drives.

But I need one in order to install my RAID drivers so that my SATA drive can be detected for installing XP on.

I have the following setup (Stuff you need to know):
Asus Vintage AH-1 barebones motherboard (AMD Socket 939)
SATA 80GB harddrive (on RAID using the ULi utility)
IDE 80GB harddrive, set to cable select, because this is technically my backup slave driver (too slow to run software from)

(Yes, this system is outdated, but I need to make due with what I have until I can build myself the system I want)

I need to be able to install my RAID drivers so that I can have my SATA drive detected.

I have ideas, but I'm not one to be able to do things about them.

I could do something that will make my 4GB Usb drive be detected as an external floppy drive. It's going to get the information off the same way, but it won't know the difference, if it thinks it's an external floppy drive. The reason I say this might work is because you can use an external floppy drive which is a floppy drive being hooked up VIA USB, so if you trick the XP 64bit install into thinking that the USB drive is actually a USB external floppy drive, it won't know the difference.

Or I could go the hard way and have it so that I have the XP 64bit install and the RAID driver I need on the USB drive and somehow make the XP install read from the USB drive for the RAID driver.

Any ideas of what I can do or if there is something out there for my ideas?

AND for those who love to make irrelevant responses: No, I don't have money to buy an external floppy drive online, and no don't tell me anything about how much you think XP 64bit sucks. I want RELEVANT responses. I want responses on what I can do to reformat NOW with the things I have readily available.
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
0
Not really, integrating drivers have proven to be a little risky. I have an nLite install and I said I can't use another CD.
 
N

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
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I missed that part.

This tells you how to install Vista from Flash.
Text

I know it is not XP. But, it MAY be relevant.
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
0
Thank you for something that might actually work. I skimmed through it and it seemed to be a lot better than the one for installing XP from a flash drive for the EeePC. It wanted things that I might now have so I was unsure if it would work for XP 64bit and if it would work because I have an nLited CD.

I originally posted this on tom's shared harware forums, and someone decided to not read my entire post (Or the topic name, for that matter) and told me the obvious that I could buy an external floppy drive online (I'm not that dumb) and wondered why I got mad when he gave me a response that was completely irrelevant to the reason of my posting.

I will definitely try out what you have linked me to and see if I can get it to work. But while I can get it onto the flash drive, I did skim through it, I am hoping that I can have my raid drivers on there for it to access from the same place.

Is there any way to get XP 64bit to take the driver from the USB drive instead?
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
0
I suppose nobody knows of a way to make XP read raid drivers from a USB drive instead. I can't do anything with my BIOS so that I can have my SATA drive detected without the RAID drivers.
 
N

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
0
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I did a search and there are many threads about someone wanting to install RAID or SATA without a floppy.
Many of them have succeeded by integrating the driver using nlite.

If you have the means to make an image of your system so that you can restore it in case things don't work, you can do this:

Use nlite and integrate the drivers.
Nlite creates an ISO image.
Use a virtual CD like Alcohol 52, which is free and mount the ISO.
Now, use the method described for Vista and the mounted XP with integrated drivers to put it on your flash drive.

So, you will have your XP, with integrated drivers, on flash.
If you can install from flash, and the driver integration does not cause problems, you will be good to go.

There are many "if"s here. That is why I suggested you make an image of your system first.
You can use a free demo of Acronis True Image.
 
N

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
0
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There are links that explain how one can copy the content of the XP CD to the hard drive and install from the hard drive.
This is one example.
http://www.msfn.org/board/Inst...Hard-Drive-t31871.html

The trick is that you may need to initiate it from something other than DOS.
I wonder if you can integrate the driver into the CD image and copy it to the hard drive. Then, create a boot flash drive like Linux and boot to Linux and initiate the installation.

Please keep in mind that I have never done this.
This is just an idea for you to think about and also a bump hoping that others may have other suggestions.
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
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I did an integration of the driver and it did not work even the slightest. I found a floppy drive in a box of stuff and I'm going to see if it is going to work for me now. If it doesn't then there is seriously something wrong with my computer or something isn't right.

The story behind why it could be something seriously wrong with my computer:
I used to live in this trailer and the electricity would fluctuate badly. You wouldn't see anything but maybe some dimming or 100ms of lamp lights being off when the central air and heating unit would kick on. Unfortunately, what you could see, is the strain on any PSU in the house. We had a variety. 280W PSU, 350W PSU, and 430-500W PSUs. Each one was damaged by this fluctuating electricity to the point that if you even plugged it in, it was instantly damaged. The minute you turn it on, the damage was done.

It brought the PC Power and Cooling 500W PSU I had to it's knees. But before this one I had a thermaltake 430w PSU, can't remember the model number something like TR2-430W or something. The problem I had with this $50 PSU was that it wouldn't ground itself. You think that's crazy, sure it is, but anything is possible. Winter is the driest time of the year. You're constantly shocking yourself on everything you touch. So everytime I would accidently touch my case, I would shock it. But not only would I shock it, I would shock it into a freeze, meaning I had to hard shut down my computer. Well a lot of this went on and went by. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, I had killed my CMOS battery and had a lot of mess-ups in Windows and Linux (I had Linux on my IDE harddrive at the time), and it fixed itself, but windows did not.

So my sound was screwed up, programs seemed screwed up, but everything was beloved patriot dorry. Until a month ago after I RMAd the PC Power and Cooling PSU. Then I got these error messages everytime the power would go out saying I'm missing NTOSKRNL.EXE but the next time I start my computer, it boots into windows fine. So when I go to mess around with my BIOS to get this reformat going, I found out that this error wasn't an error because Windows is screwed up, this error was associated with anything I did to the BIOS. Did I look at the BIOS? Yes, well then I get that error. Did I save my settings in the BIOS? Yes, well I get that error. Everytime I did something with it, it would give me that error message, but otherwise it was fine.

So why am I reformatting?
So I can have a nice clean install.

See I am making due with my computer now.
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
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There is no need, I moved. But I plan on just upgrading the breaker box for my dad as a christmas present, so that he doesn't have to worry about it either. Which is cheaper than buying a UPS unit in the long run.
 
N

Navid

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2004
5,053
0
0
Just in case the transients that your PC has experienced may have corrupted the BIOS, have you flashed the BIOS with the latest available BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer and loaded the defaults?

There is no point spending time on the OS if something is wrong with the BIOS.
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
0
So I was going to flash the BIOS by getting the download to do it, and it required I be on my computer to make it happen. So what I did for now, since I plan on upgrading with this after christmas: http://secure.newegg.com/WishL...WishListNumber=9280748 is that I popped in an Ubuntu 8.04 live cd, transfered the backup files over from the IDE to the SATA and then installed Windows onto the IDE harddrive. Now I'm with a perfectly fresh install of XP 64bit and I know now the severity of the corruption of my Windows install before. It was so bad that the sound quality I experienced was extremely garbbled in comparison, performance was terrible, and programs would act funny. I didn't know the exact degree of corruption until I got a fresh install of Windows.
 
Q

Quiescent

Junior Member
Jul 27, 2006
8
0
0
Yes, but it did not work for the one I got. Which is the only one available. So I made it easy on myself and dealt with what I have until the next upgrade I will have, which I'm sure I won't need to use a floppy drive ever again to install onto a recognized SATA drive.

Well, I'm glad to report a perfectly fresh install on a very slow harddrive, but none the less a perfectly fresh install that will due until I get that awesome upgrade. :)
 
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