Toby Howard :: Toby's Tips :: Install XP from USB CD

How to install XP from an external USB CD, using floppy discs

Toby Howard, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Here's the scenario I found myself with:

• I needed to reinstall XP on a laptop, but the laptop's internal CD / DVD had exploded. The cost of replacing the CD was about 1/4 what I paid for the laptop.
• I had USB sockets on the laptop, and an external USB CD drive plugged in.
• The laptop had a floppy disc drive.

So, how to reinstall XP? Well, if you know the answer, please stop reading now — I don't want to bore you! Otherwise, I hope my experience will help.

I spent ages googling, and didn't find out much except many people saying: See if your BIOS (or an upgrade of it) supports booting from USB. If it does, you're fixed! If it doesn't... you'll need to get a DOS USB driver working first...

Well, my BIOS didn't support USB boot, and I didn't find a BIOS upgrade, so I tried going the DOS USB route but wasted several million hours on that, trying various DOS USB driver thingies. Failure. None of the DOS USB drivers I tried would let me see the USB CD.

Then I found the answer, which involved much self-kicking, but that's what happened.

The answer is to get XP boot floppies from Microsoft.

You can download an installer which then writes 6 floppies, which have enough stuff on them (including USB drivers) to start off the XP install. When their bit is done, you can use your XP CD in your external USB drive to complete the installation.

Here's a link to the Microsoft support site. BUT, there are some gotchas that got me:

• Make sure you download the correct setup file. If you're installing XP PRO, you need the XP PRO floppy install. Likewise if you need XP HOME, be sure to get the XP HOME floppy install. And similarly with SP1, SP2 versions: the floppy set you install has to match the install CD you have.

• Floppies (especially old and shabby ones like I was using) fail. During my initial install from one of the floppies I got a "something.sys corrupted, press Y to abort installation" -type error. I simply chucked that floppy away, and wrote another one. Problem fixed. Dog-hair in floppy -type problem, that's all.

• And if the install language is an issue, make sure you install the same language version of the floppy install as your CD language. (On my first try I got this wrong — I was trying to reinstall Japanese XP Pro SP2, but by mistake used the English floppy install. The install worked, but all the text was unreadable "mojibake". BTW even when I did use the right floppies, after installation the Japanese input for XP didn't work right — I had to manually install all the Japanese fonts from the XP CD).

Well, I hope this has been useful to someone... If you'd like to email me with comments or suggestions, then please do (and thank you to all those who have!).

Best wishes,
Toby

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