Creating an XP Home System Boot Disk

[bigandy]

I am going to begin building my first PC sometime in the near future and I need a system disk, but when I have tried to do it, in XP Home, it does not have the necessary files, sucha as FDISK on it. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

[bailey]

you do not heed any boot disk for xp, home or pro

the cd is the boot disk

just boot with the cd drive

[TEEB]

For WIN XP boot disks go here

[not important]

If you need the XP boot disks go here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...5-BD5AFEE126D8

[RJ]

No you really don't need the XP boot disks. Do yourself a favor, forget both links above, and boot from the CD. You will see how easy it is.

RJ

[bigandy]

Thank you for the help. But RJ and bailey, wouldn't I need to install the cd drive's driver in order to boot from the xp disc, therefore making it necessary to have a boot disk?

[RJ]

No. Definitely no. That's the beauty of it, that is what most people still don't know.

The booting from CD is supported by the BIOS itself. And it has been supported by BIOS for a long time, even my old Pentium 133 is capable to boot from CD.
You probably need to change the boot order in BIOS, set it to CDROM first. Also if you have more optical devices it's possible that you can only boot from one of them and not from all, so if booting doesn't work in one drive, try the other.

And it is possible since Win98. Yep, Win98, ME, NT4, 2K and XP. . neither of them requires a boot floppy.
The last time I required a boot disk was in Windows 95 times, so it really works, and it works well and it works fast.

Also FDISK and FORMAT are not needed in WinNT/2K/XP, only in Win9x. The creation of partitions and formatting them is done within the windows setup. So you boot from CD, it will load a couple of files, and shortly after you will be asked where to install. There you can make your NTFS partitions (can't be done with FDISK) and thereafter format them.

RJ

[TEEB]

RJ is right on. It's much easier to work with the CD. The boot disks are only for people who can't boot thru the CDROM.

[bigandy]

Well thank you both very much. I will definitely go with the CD Boot instead of the floppy.

[RJ]

The boot disks are only for people who can't boot thru the CDROM.

Actually no PC isn't capable of booting from CD. At least no modern and semi-modern ones. Even my old P133 can boot from CD.
If anyone can't boot from CD then his PC won't be able to run Win2K/XP. . .

RJ

[TEEB]

I have been in a position where I couldn't boot thru the CDROM. That's why I found out about the boot disks. The following is copied from the Microsoft Download Center:


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.