Sunday 8 July 2012

82 - install XP from XP ISOs

This new tutorial shows you how you can place a number of different XP install ISO files on a grub4dos bootable USB drive and have multiple grub4dos menu items so that you can have a fully automated install without modifying the ISO - even if the ISO is a standard MS one.
The grub4dos menu allows you to specify a diskpart script so you can partition and format the drive however you want, an unattend.txt answer file so you can automate the install and change any settings you like, and a folder that will be copied over to the target C: drive during the install. This folder can contain all the drivers for a specific system, so you can use the same ISO to install a Dell PC or an Asus laptop and specify a different driver folder, diskpart script and answer file for each.

You can also have different answer files for different languages and timezones but use the same XP install ISO. This process will also work with nLited ISOs or XP install ISOs that are already semi-automated.
It uses WinPE v3 as the bootable OS and then runs diskpart and winnt32.exe to start the install. Only a single USB boot is required - the next boot is off of the hard disk.

2 comments:

  1. In Tutorial 82 you mention an AUTO folder that is supposed to be downloaded, but there is nowhere I can find to download the file
    "2.5 Copy the two files which can be found in the downloaded AUTO folder, onto the C:\pe86\mount\windows\system32 folder."
    It has taken me quite a while to tell you about this...almost ever since you posted the tutorial. I thought maybe using the AUTO_RESTORE file in the previous tutorial, but that is for backup/restore. Thanks for looking into this.

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  2. The Auto folder is in the ImDisk.zip download. It contains mysetup.cmd and winpeshl.ini

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