Install Windows/Office from USB drive?

S

SarverSystems

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 9, 2002
Messages
7,408
What is the best method for storing, and installing the following:

Windows XP Home
Windows XP Pro
Windows XP Home Dell
Windows XP Home Gateway

Windows Vista Home Premium OEM 32-bit
Windows Vista Home Premium OEM 64-bit
Windows VIsta Home Premium Dell
Windows Vista Home Premium Gateway

Windows Vista Business OEM

Microsoft Office (all flavors from XP to 2007)

Norton 360
Norton 360 2
Norton AV 2008
Norton AV 2009
Norton IS 2008
Norton IS 2009
Norton Endpoint Protection

Adaware
Spybot
Hijackthis

I do have licenses and discs for everything, I just wanna keep it all in one super-conveinent place to install from.

A 32GB drive should be sufficient?

When booting to USB, how would I tell it which OS to install, being as each one will be in its own folder?
 
32 should be plenty.

Depending on your target hardware and which OSes, saving working images of installed systems to the drive might be the easiest thing. A USB hard drive with Parted Magic is very convenient for that type of thing.

For the remainder, maybe a setup involving separate partitions, each set up to be an independent HDD windows install spot. You could choose between them by using Grub or some other boot manager installed straight to the USB drive. You might want a copy of Ubuntu 8.10 on the drive too, just in case you need to do maintenance or alterations to the drive.
 
If I understand you correctly, you suggest partitoning the USB drive and copying each version of Windows to its own partition?
 
Sort-of, yeah. The XP versions could probably fit in directories off of the same drive, because it installs like NT4, but I don't know if Vista will. Vista might want separate partitions per version. All your non-os stuff could easily share a partition.
 
I'm sure about the Vista OSes, but XP can be installed from DOS, so I'd just make the USB drive DOS bootable, and go from there. As for Office, you can do an admin install, and even customize the setup to create a custom install file, and store that entire directory on the flash drive.
 
I can just put Office(s) in their own folders on a prtition with Norton and other stuff. I pretty much have that part down.

It's just the OS part that I'm unsure of.

I'll also have to remember to slipstream all of the OSs before I start!!!! That in itself will take a few days!!!
 
You don't have to slipstream them all, but if the target PCs are nearly identical or it's just for repeat installs on the same system, it would save a ton of time in the long run. Otherwise, the installers can be put on a partition or six.
 
No slipstreaming then. Like I said up there, the XP installs can probably share the same partition, but the Vista installs will probably each need their own partitions.
 
Do it then, whatever. You said it would take you forever. Grab nlite and make an easy job of it.
 
I was thinking you had a reason to NOT slipstream them. Like some kind of performance issue, or installation issue.

I think the time involved in slipstreaming outweighs the time involved in downloading and installing service pack after service pack.

I'll have to check out nlite. I never heard of it.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.
 
If you want something easier for slipstreaming, especially if all you plan to do is add in the service packs, check out AutoStreamer.
 
Just so we're all on the same page, this is what I am understanding from everyone's posts of what will and will not work:

Install BartPE on the thumbdrive. Move the contents of each of my Windows CDs/DVDs to a separate folder on the thumbdrive.

Then, to install whichever version of Windows I want, I just click on the setup.exe within that folder?

If that works, is there anything smaller/faster than BartPE?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top