Install XP I386 on C:Drive using Dos Xcopy

[lostplanet]

having an absolute nightmare with an old laptop i want to resurrect for my girlfriends son to watch MLB and dvds on.

its a sharp PC GP 10 CM sold by PCworld in the UK around 2002.
the dvd playback is awful so i bought a new segate 40 GB 5400 8 mb cache hardrive to install XP on to replace the old failing 4200.

for some reason the CDROM is not recognised since i tried to upgrade the firmware to improve DVD playback/ boot from a self made XP Pro disk.
now i cant get the XP pro disk or an original XP home disk to boot to install on the new drive.

i have tried various combinations to try to get it to boot but nothing has worked. in the bios it says the secondary IDE channel is disabled and i cannot find a Insyde bios to reflash it.

the laptoip has a built in floppy drive.

so i am trying to do the following process (found on the net)to install XP Pro fresh from C: drive:

Quote:
"Sometimes it isn't possible to install Windows XP from the CD. But with the assistance of Windows 98 you can load Windows XP quite easily.

Follow these steps:

Create a boot floppy on a Windows 98 machine.

Boot your new machine with the boot floppy using the "boot with CDROM support" option.

Place the Windows 98 CD into the CDROM and at the c: prompt navigate to the Windows 98 directory on the CD.

Start smartdrv.exe and copy the xcopy.exe command to the c:root. (If you can't find it you can easily download a copy from the Web.)

Put the XP CD in and xcopy the installation folder (I386) to the C: drive.
Switch to the copied folder and type winnt.exe (the XP installation command).
Windows XP will now install itself.

A further benefit to this process is that future software or hardware installation will not require you to use the XP CD. It will automatically go to the installation folder to find the information it needs to install. "


Im stuck at smartdrv and xcopy.
i can seem to copy smartdrv to the C:root folder but i cannot seem to get xcopy to work(or even find xcopy.exe).
i have tried downloading xcopy, xxcopy but non of these are working(i dont know the correct commands either).

is it because i have already installed XP(NTFS) on the new drive(hoping that it would work if installed on another machine)?

can anyone explain the process in more detail with DOS commands?

[EzyStvy]

No can boot with a win98 disk and use a NTFS drive....

You could run FDISK off the floppy and zap the NTFS partition and then recreate a FAT 32 partition.

[lostplanet]

cool doing that now, thanks Stvy

[lostplanet]

ok i formatted and copied smartdrv.exe to C:

is this the correct command?

xcopy E:\I386 C:

[mairving]

So the question is...how are you going to be able to copy anything off of the CD if the CD is not working?

If you can access the CD then you can run E:\setup and no xcopy needed.

[lostplanet]

mairving the cdrom works(is recognised) when it is in windows and dos.
but i won't boot from CD

[lostplanet]

when i try that e:\setup.exe it says "this program cannot be run in DOS mode"

[mairving]

You can try this:
Windows XP Professional Utility: Setup Disks for Floppy Boot Install

Overview The Windows XP startup disk allows computers without a bootable CD-ROM to perform a new installation of the operating system. The Windows XP startup disk will automatically load the correct drivers to gain access to the CD-ROM drive and start a new installation of Setup. You cannot upgrade from a Windows XP startup disk. Windows XP Home Edition startup disks will not work for Windows XP Professional installations and vice-versa.

If it is an upgrade disk you won't be able to boot off of it.

[EzyStvy]

How to start the Setup program from MS-DOS in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;307848

[lostplanet]

ok thanks to both mairving and stvy, i tried the utility but unfortunately it wanted 6 floppys to put the program on and 2 of mine i could find had errors.

so i've tried stvys last suggestion and so far XP is installing as normal without a bootable CDRom drive.