Can you copy the entire XP Pro CD onto your Hard drive, and set it as a boot option?

July 22, 2004 1:16 AM

I am going crazy about this, and google won't turn up anything useful. Laptop with no CDrom or floppy: Took HD out and installed XP using my desktop. Freezes loading mup.sys. I already installed the MB swap patch.

Basically what I am asking is: Can you copy the entire XP Pro CD onto your Hard drive, and set it as a boot option? Can it work? Does anyone have any ideas?
posted by Keyser Soze to computers & internet (5 comments total)

OK. Put the HD back in the desktop and boot up from it.
Copy the XP CD to the HD.
Still on the desktop machine, start an upgrade XP install from the new HD copy of the files.
When it reboots for the first time, power down.
Put the HD back in the laptop and let it boot into setup.
Run though the XP upgrade install on the laptop.
Hopefully all is nice.
posted by ed\26h at 1:44 AM on July 22, 2004

Just use an external CDROM/CDRW/DVDROM.
posted by riffola at 6:39 AM on July 22, 2004

> Copy the XP CD to the HD.

If disk space is an issue, all you actually have to copy in from the CD to do an install is the \I386 tree.
posted by jfuller at 6:47 AM on July 22, 2004

In fact, it's always convenient to have the \I386 tree on your HD, because forever after when Windows says "please insert your Windows CD" you can just point to that directory on the HD.
posted by jfuller at 6:49 AM on July 22, 2004

Thanks, it worked. Here's what i did:

1. Installed XP Pro on desktop with the Laptop HD

2. After install, copied /I386 dir onto drive

3. Double clicked Winnt32.exe and started install

4. Chose full install, reset and moved to laptop. Drive is installing right now.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:01 PM on July 22, 2004