XP bootable fresh install CD Documentation My work here is essentially in response to people who want a bootable CDrom utilities disk

http://sammccord.com/window_xp_bootable_cd.html

XP bootable fresh install CD Documentation

My work here is essentially in response to people who want a bootable CDrom utilities disk to help them install Windows XP fresh when their floppy drive is bad or when there is no floppy drive. You can also use this disk for Win98SE.

START QUICKDOCS

The file you will download will be a .zip file containing an .iso image file of the bootable Disk. Use a burning program which can burn images including .iso's such as Nero. When booting from the CD the Boot Files will be seen as Drive A: and the Utlilties will be seen as Drive R:

The utilities are separated from the boot files so you can use them in Windows without booting from the CD.

END QUICKDOCS

Before using this disk make sure you set your BIOS to boot from the CD drive first, and make sure the channel it's on is set to AUTO. Also note that the CD drive you want to boot from often likes to be set as a Master Drive.

You may be thinking why use this CD when the Windows CD is bootable?

Well, two main reasons. This disk has the tools you need to totally clean your hard drive of EVERYTHING. Secondly, it allows you to to install XP from your hard drive which has some advantages prior to, and during the install and also, later on after XP is running.

Other reasons include being able to run a full scandisk on your hard drive before you use it again to see if there are any bad sectors that need to be marked bad.

The bootable CD boots to a menu where you can choose one of the four universal CDrom drivers. This is necessary to read and use other cdrom disks after booting up with this disk.

It includes the utilities you may need to bring your hard drive back to a factory fresh state to help guarantee a successful Windows installation.

Once you've booted from the CD you made you can now setup your hard drive [fdisk, format, zero fill, wipe out all partitions etc.] and properly prepare it for a 100% fresh install on a squeaky clean disk.

You can also use fdisk to create a larger than 32 gig partition for XP. Fdisk will of course create the partition in FAT32 but you can convert it later to NTFS after XP is installed using the convert utility in XP.

Or perhaps, you just want XP on a large FAT32 partition to make accessing and/or recovering data much easier in case of of system crash.

I've also included a utility called setuphd.bat which makes your C: drive on bootup see your IDE CDrom Drive. The utility copies the dos utilites to
C:\utils and transfers a working config.sys and autoexec.bat files to C: It also transfers the win98se system files to C: to make it bootable. You can only use setuphd.bat if you boot from the CD.

This gives you the option of booting to C: and then following the directions in the "hints" section below. Yes you'll be in DOS 7.1 which either XP or Win98 can install from.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
When you use this cdrom bootdisk the basic startup files will show up as Drive A: The utilities which are on the same disk will show up as Drive R: If you have two CDrom drives the second one will be Drive S:

There are two ways to read this help file on the CD. First, you can type edit readme.txt which uses dos edit to read this file, or, you can type help which opens up the file in a special viewer.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Some hints on installing Windows from DOS

For XP original, copy all the contents of the i386 folder from the CD to a folder you make on C: called i386. Then navigate to that folder and type
winnt.exe

For later versions of XP eg SP1/SP2 remove this CD, insert your XP CD, go to the i386 folder on the XP CD and type winnt.exe

For Windows 98SE, it's a nice touch to first make a folder on C: called win98 and copy the contents of the Win98 folder from the MS Windows CD to it first and then run the setup file in C:\win98

Note it will take some time to copy the files to the hard drive, but XP Original or win98 will install much faster from the hard disk and you eliminate possible read errors or stalls if installing directly from the MS CD.

This method is also nice because you dont have to go looking for the Windows CD when you make changes to your system. Your computer will think that the Windows CD is in the directory you created and installed Windows from.

In other words, if Windows or a driver program asks for your CD just point it to the folder you created and copied the .cabs to although most of the time it will do it automatically.

A second advantage of installing from C: instead of from the CD is that during the process where you first copy the files from the cd to the hard drive before you run setup [win98SE] or winnt.exe [XP] if the CD is bad dirty, or has some bad areas you'll discover them now instead of later.

So if a file doesn't copy, most often you can just clean the disk and try again. This is WAY better than if it happened duing a XP install from a dirty CD where you may end up with a corrupt install and have to start all over again.

smartdrv is loaded up by default to really speed up the process.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Extra utilities included in addition to the standard MS-DOS utils.

It includes an aefdisk folder which has aefdisk and docs to first wipe out ALL partitions on your hard drive with the command:

aefisk /delall

It includes a zerofill folder which has wipe to use to bring the hard drive back to factory specs with the command:

wipe 0 To wipe the C: drive of all data aka fill it with zeros

Zap is also included which only writes the first 128 blocks with zeros. Docs for both wipe and zap are included.

It includes a zerocmos folder with 4 different utilities to use to bring your BIOS back to the default settings. Should only be used to clean out unknown BIOS AXS passwords ie when you can boot to A: or this CD but cant AXS the BIOS. Docs for all 4 utils are included. Note that various anti-virus programs will give false positives for some of the "zerocmos" files.

It includes delpart to selectively delete partitions including NTFS ones. Note that while fdisk can delete primary NTFS partitions, it cant delete
NTFS logical drives in Extended partitions.

It includes a NTFS file reader/copier in the filecopy foder. This program allows you to see and copy files from an NTFS drive to a FAT 12/16/32 drive or any network drive.