Installing XP with Flash Drive-I

How will it work?

As with most cool new techniques, there are a few catches. For starters, not every PC is capable of booting from a USB flash drive. For the most part, computers manufactured within the last two years are generally able to boot from a flash drive. Older systems may require a BIOS update, or might not be able to boot from a flash drive at all.

Preparing your Windows installation CD

One of the requirements for creating our bootable USB flash drive is a Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD. If your Windows XP installation CD doesn't already include Service Pack 2, then you will have to make a CD that includes Service Pack 2 through a technique called slipstreaming.

Other requirements

In addition to your Windows XP installation CD, there are a couple of other things that you are going to need. For starters, you will need the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You can download this tool for free.
Another utility that you are going to need is Bart's Preinstalled Environment Bootable Live Windows CD / DVD, or BartPE for short. You can download this utility for free from the BartPE Web site.
In addition to the software requirements, you must verify that the PC that you will be using to create the Windows deployment has 1.5 GB of free hard disk space (minimum) and supports booting from a USB device. It is strongly recommend that the PC be running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Prior to Service Pack 2, Windows XP sometimes had trouble interacting with USB storage devices.

Formatting the flash drive

Now that you have all of the prerequisites taken care of, it's time to actually start setting up our flash drive. The first step in doing so, as strange as it sounds, is to format the flash drive. Windows will actually let you format a flash drive in the same way that you format a floppy disk. However, formatting a flash drive in this way will not work for this project.
Instead, you must format the flash drive by using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that you downloaded earlier. To do so, simply open the utility, select the device followed by the FAT file system option and click Start.
Once the device has been formatted, you must make it bootable. To do so, you must copy the BOOT.INI, NTLDR, and NTDETECT from the root directory of your PC's boot drive to the flash drive. These files are hidden by default, so you will either have to configure Windows Explorer to show hidden files (including protected operating system files) or you will have to open a Command Prompt window and use the COPY command to copy the files.
If you choose to use the Windows Explorer method, then open Internet Explorer and enter C: into the address bar so that you are looking at your local hard drive. Next, select the Folder Options command from the Tools menu. When the Folder Options properties sheet opens, select the View tab. Now, just select the Show Hidden Files and Folders and deselect the Hide Extensions for Known File Types and the Hide Protected Operating System Files check boxes. Click OK to continue.

Booting from the USB flash drive

Now that you have formatted your USB flash drive and installed the boot files onto it, the next thing that you must do is to configure your PC to allow you to boot from the flash drive. This is all done through the computer's BIOS Setup. I can't give you specific instructions for this part, because every computer is different. I can give you a few pointers though.
You can access your computer's BIOS by pressing a specific key immediately after you turn the PC on. The key varies, but it is usually either [F1], [F2], or [Delete]. Once you are in the BIOS Setup, you should verify that all of your computer's USB options are enabled. This might include things like support for legacy USB devices or support for USB 2.0. If there is a time out setting for USB devices, you should set it to the max to insure that the system doesn't time out while waiting on the USB device to boot.
Next, find the section on boot device priority. Normally, a USB flash drive (which is usually listed as USB-HDD, but may be listed as a removable device) will have a very low boot priority. If the USB flash drive's boot priority is lower than the hard disk (listed as HDD) then the only time the computer would ever boot off of the USB flash drive is if the system were to fail to boot from the hard disk. You must therefore rearrange the boot device priority so that the flash drive has a higher priority than the hard drive.

Configuring Windows

Now that we have finally made it through all of the prep work, it's time to start setting up Windows. As you have probably already guessed, the process of installing Windows to a flash drive is quite a bit different from your normal, run of the mill installation. There are a couple of reasons for this.
For starters, a full blown Windows XP deployment takes up over a Gigabyte of hard disk space. When you are installing to a flash drive, disk space is a scarce commodity. Even if you have over a Gigabyte of space on your flash drive, you probably don't want to use it all on Windows. It would be nice to have room to install a few applications. Therefore, you need to trim the excess fat off of Windows.
The other reason why the installation process is so different from the usual Windows installation is because Windows Setup is not designed to install Windows to a flash drive. You therefore have to configure Windows using an alternate method.
The PEBuilder utility that you downloaded earlier can take care of both of these issues. PEBuilder is designed to create a build of Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003) that does not take up as much space as a full blown installation. Once you create this new build, you can copy it to the flash drive. For right now, I will show you how to create a basic Windows build and copy it to the memory stick. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to install applications once Windows is up and running. Therefore, after I show you how to create a basic Windows build, I will show you how to create a build that includes some applications.
Begin the process by opening PEBuilder. When you open PEBuilder, you will see a screen similar to the one that's shown in Figure A. Simply enter the path to the Windows installation files (the ones from your Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD). Next, verify that the Create ISO Image and the Burn to CD check boxes are not selected and then click the Build button. PEBuilder will now create the new Windows build.

Figure A

You must use PEBuilder to create a Windows build that will work with a flash drive.

Now, it's time to copy Windows to the flash drive. To do so, you will have to use a special batch file that's included with PEBuilder. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to c:\pebuilder313\plugin\peinst. Now, insert an empty flash drive into the computer's USB port and then execute the file PEINST.CMD. You will now see a menu appear as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

PEBuilder uses a batch file to install Windows onto a flash drive.

Type 1 and press [Enter] and you will be prompted to enter the path to the build that you have created. Enter C:\pebuilder313\BartPE. Now, type 2, press [Enter], and you will be prompted for the target path. Enter the drive letter that Windows has assigned to your USB flash drive. After doing so, the menu is updated as shown in Figure C. The menu now displays the source path and the destination drive. Type 5 and press [Enter] to install Windows to the flash drive.

Figure C

Use menu option 5 to install Windows to the flash drive.