Installing Windows XP from a PARTITION on a hard drive?

[stephenmbell]

I have a client that has a tablet pc. For whatever reason, the machine will not boot from the external usb cd/dvd rom to use the restore disk that came with the tablet. We get a PXE Media Agent Failed

I figured it would work if I could remove the hard drive, format it, partition it, boot it to one partition, (with the restore on it) and install on the other partition.

I have successfully removed the hard drive, connected it to another pc, formatted, partitioned.

The problem is:

How do I get the system to boot to that partition with the install on it??

I have tried various bios settings, yet I cannot get the machine to boot.

Any tips or suggestions??

Is this possible??

thanks

sb

 

[vacunita]

You can boot to a Partition without an OS. You have to boot to an OS and then run the install.

I would initiate the install from the other machine, and when its done copying files and is going to reboot for the first time, put it back into the original machine and boot it.

since it hasn't installed any drivers or anything it will just continue with the install normally and setup everything from the original machine.

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[stephenmbell]

I am sorry, but I do not understand your post.

Can I put the hard drive in another win xp machine and install windows xp to that drive?

i am connecting it as an external.


thanks.

sb

 

[alexealas]

SB,
Vacunita is right; what you have to do is on another laptop system removed the hard drive and put the one you just partitioned, initiate the Windows XP installation process up to the level of copying all the necessary files usually after finish doing all the copying process it will ask you to restart the computer, instead of restarting shut it down completely but before doing that copy the windows xp installation cd on one directory on C:\
Then remove the hard drive and place it on the table PC and restart the computer, if it ask you again for the installation CD just browse to the location where you copied the installation CD and finalize the installation process.