Anyone installed Windows XP from USB?

[nr2117]

Hey, so this is off topic but I'm hoping you guys might have experience with this.

I've got an old, 2002 era computer I'm building (IDE and SATA connectors) and I've got an IDE and SATA hard drive, it picks up the IDE but not the SATA. Alas, I don't have any IDE optical drive, and it won't pick up the SATA dvd drive I have got.

I've tried "windows XP from a USB stick" using win to flash, but when the computer boots from my USB it just puts a single J in the DOS prompt. Well, it's not even a DOS prompt.

Anyone had success with this? I've heard it's possible and it'd save me going on ebay to source a working IDE CD/DVD rom

[Silari]

Been a VERY long time since I had a reason to, but I've done it before with YUMI IIRC. Can't say how well the modern version works, but a quick look says it still supports making bootable USB XP installers.

[nr2117]

That actually worked! I got into a boot menu, selected the windows XP installer, said it was going to load 615mb, about 144mb the screen went blank. I wish I had a CRT (I did, two years ago, but it broke) as I suspect it was going to another resolution but I haven't got further.

I have a USB optical drive, I'm going to rummage around and find a blank CD, I might be able to boot from that on the old computer. Hopefully the USB sockets will provide it enough current.

[Ghoulish]

The installer can't find a driver for the chipset on the mobo, you need to add it to the flash drive before you start the installation process.

Check the motherboard manufacturers site for the required drivers (assuming XP is still supported!).

https://www.balena.io/etcher/ is another tool like YUMI mentioned above.

[azesmbog]

The most effective (but also the most time-consuming way is to make a bootable USB flash drive with a CD-ROM partition, which in the BIOS and in the computer itself is seen as a banal USB CD-ROM.
Installing Windows happens as with a regular CD-ROM. It is made by special utilities from chipset manufacturers, so not every flash drive can be switched to this mode.
But all difficulties more than pay off later
here is my flash drive made by 8! years ago

[nr2117]

I've tried to slipstream drivers in before. Never got any sucess with NT lite.
I'm going to install linux on it, and hope I can update the firmware from there.