W2K Pro. Install without CD Drive

[discokym]

Does anyone know a reliable way of installing windows 2000 professional on a machine that does not have a CD ROM drive.

I'm thinking I'll be able to copy the CD to a hard drive and then plug the hard drive into the machine without the CD rom so that the install can happen from the hard drive.

The bootable CD disk made with MakeBoot.exe creates a disk that then goes and looks for a CD drive -- no good for me. I want it to look for the install files from a hard drive.

Any suggestions?

 

[Phantasm66]

yes... you could copy the installation files onto a viable FAT32 partition before beginning and then boot from a WIN98 boot disk....

 

[discokym]

Thanks, I seem to recall trying this... PC building at my house tends to happen very late at night... I'm not really sure whether I dreamed it!?!

Anyway, When I tried this sort of thing (booting with 98 boot disk and running w2k setup.exe from a HDD image) I think it said "Setup must be run from within windows" or something to that effect.

Maybe I need to install 98 and then run the HDD W2K setup image from my HDD... I hope not!

Any other suggestions?

 

[MrGaribaldi]

just do a dir winnt*.exe /s
browse to where it is, then run it...

You might want to load smartdrv first though, as it'll speed up the install quite a lot...
You should find it on the w98 bootdisk, but if it isn't there, just copy it from and old w9x/dos install...

 

[Phantasm66]

well... make sure that you have the FULL VERSION of the OS and not the upgrade version.... anyway.... make sure you have chosen to unhide all hidden files and system files and then copy all of that i386 folder to your already made partition... it should then work... post back if it does not...

pretty sure (in this half drunken state) you run :

d:\i386\setup.exe

or

d:\i386\winnt32.exe

or

d:\i386\winnt.exe

from the command prompt

with smartdrv.exe already loaded...

sorry.. its been AGES since i installed it from a machine that could not boot from CD..... but anyway its needs ALL of those files pre-copied and ready before you install...

stick with us.... if there is a problem we shall diagnose....

 

[discokym]

Thanks Guys!

It seems to have worked. I just copied i386 across to a nice clean FAT partition (D), formatted my C drive, booted from a 98 floppy and ran d:\i386\winnt.exe... very nice

Just want to commend you on your fantastic responses and great board.

You may get many more questions from me as I try and install and configure a computer classroom in Northern India in a couple of weeks. Would be great to have some technical brainiacs to help incase it all goes pear-shaped.

Cheers!
Kym

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Nice to hear it worked

And if you run into any problems in India, just post it on the forums... We love a good challenge

 

[discokym]

Wow!

Thanks very much for everyones comments. Your responses have been really helpful (and quick) -- You guys ROCK!

Hopefully I won't run into problems in India but if I do it's nice to know there are a bunch of people who love a good challenge!

Thanks again everyone!!

 

[nider]

I usely always copy my windows OS to the harddrive and install from there. It's alot faster.

Plus that way, for any updates or anything that it needs the origan files, it's already there and I don't have to dig out the cd. With XP this doesn't seem to be a big deal, but with the previous OS, it helped alot.

more as lame as MS can be, they have always been cool about install their software from any location.

be seeing you

nider