Boot a Windows 2k install CD image from a flash drive

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pdp76

Weaksauce
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Jan 31, 2006
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I've read all sorts of posts about booting Windows from a flash drive, but I haven't found any definitive answer to my question. Anyway, here's my deal, I have an old laptop on which the optical drive has died. I want to reinstall win2k from the CD onto the hard drive, but obviously can't because of the bad optical drive. The laptop, however, can boot off the PCMCIA slots. I have a CF to PCMCIA adapter which I can use to make the computer boot off the CF card.

I understand that the boot sectors of a CD are different from boot sectors of the CF flash card (which is basically just an ATA drive) so I can't just image the CD onto the flash card. I also understand that the Windows 2k install CD boots a file called SETUPLDR.BIN which is inside the \i386 subdirectory of the root of the CD.

So here is what I'm thinking, when I used to setup Win98, all I'd do is boot into was a DOS prompt and then run the setup.exe file. If I copy the Win2k CD install contents onto the CF card and boot into an equivalent of a dos prompt and run the SETUPLDR.BIN somehow, would that work? If so, how would I go about doing it? Thanks!
 
IIRC, you can install windows from any directory. You can copy the contents of the windoes cd to the CF card on another computer and then boot off a floppy/cf card into 98/dos and run the setup from the windows dir. If you have 98 on there right now, or u can use a boot floppy/something, start 98 and press f8 to get u to the command prompt only. From there you should be able to run the setup off the win dir.

Several things to check though... make sure 98 can read the pcmcia/cf reader, not sure how 98 handles pcmcia, but i remember u had to have special sys drivers and commands to load up the cd...
make sure u have drivers for what u need on that cf... u should look into copying the drivers directly into the windows install folder so it doenst need to prompt u... should be similar to automating/slipstreaming the windows cd... google has the links to good guides for that...

try it and let us know how it goes...
 
Yes, that works all and well for windows 98, but the win2k install CD isn't like the win98 install CD, you can't just run files off it when booted into DOS. I was hoping there was an equivalent way to manually run SETUPLDR.BIN from the win2k install CD.
 
I did not see a WINNT.exe on the win2k install disc. SETUPLDR.BIN is the 1st file which is executed after getting past the boot sector according to other posts I've read.
 
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