Hello. I have an old netbook without an optical drive and I would like to install Windows XP Home Edition on it. The problem is it's impossible to install XP from a USB drive because the driver for the USB controller isn't initialised during the first boot and the installer won't continue from there. I have tried an external optical drive, but the installation was really slow on it and seemed to be frozen. I tried taking out the hard drive and installing XP from another PC and running Sysprep to remove any hardware identifiers, but that got stuck in the "Please Wait" screen. So, how would I install Windows XP on this netbook?
What is the make / model of the laptop. Some win98 laptops (like old Sony VAIOs) need a BIOS update to run XP, or, are simply not compatible. :MJ
Asus Eee 1215P. It shipped with Windows 7, and I have the latest BIOS. Asus even provides drivers for XP. I'm sure it's compatible.
Make a 1-2GB partition on the HDD, extract the XP ISO on that partition, run Setup from /Sources folder? (Can't remember if XP dir structure is the same as 7)
Ok. The directory structure is definitely not the same, but there is Setup in the root of the ISO, and I believe there's also something in \I386. Do I for at the partition as FAT32 or NTFS, and what OS should I install before I do this?
I386, that's the one - you can also start setup from DOS by running it from the i386 folder if you have a method of booting to DOS FAT32 file system if you're gonna be accessing it from DOS, probably best to keep it FAT32 either way with XP tbh, then you can format the main partition to NTFS during setup You don't have any OS installed on the machine? Any will do, even Linux just to get that ISO extracted and partition made Stick the drive in another machine, make the partition, extract the ISO to it, stick it back into the netbook, boot into DOS and start setup from i386 Make a DOS USB stick
Okay,I finally got around to tearing down this netbbok and getting the hard drive out.I extracted the Windows ISO to a 2GB partition on the hard drive. However, there is no setup in the i386 folder. The one in the root of the drive does not run in DOS. What is the name of the file that I should run?
Is SmartDrive available on Windows XP CD? if not, Do you have Windows 98 disk that actually have the /COMMANDS/SmartDrive on CD?