A friend of mine was using 2000. She is planing to get XP. Can you
format an existing drive and install XP without using the boot from CD
option?

Terry wrote:

No. AFAIK.....

--
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

Yes you can. From within W2K you can pop the CD in and run setup.exe from
there. But why would you unless you cannot boot from the CD?

"Terry" <kilowatt@charter.net> wrote in message
news:1143744542.376478.130960@t31g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...

Gordon wrote:
Incorrect. One can boot from a 3.5 in bootable floppy [such as the one one
can create with Windows 98] and run winnt.exe from the i386 folder on the
Windows XP CD, which starts the XP installation routine. 'Best to put
smartdrv.exe onto the boot floppy and run it before launching winnt.exe. If
one does not, the installation can take many many hours. smartdrv.exe can be
had out of any Windows 98 WINDOWS folder. Look up smartdrv on the 'Net.

Terry wrote:
Yes. One can boot from a 3.5 in bootable floppy [such as the one one can
create with Windows 98] and run winnt.exe from the i386 folder on the
Windows XP CD, which starts the XP installation routine. 'Best to put
smartdrv.exe onto the boot floppy beforehand. When after booting from the
boot floppy run smartdrv.exe before launching winnt.exe. If one does not,
the installation can take many many hours. smartdrv.exe can be had out of
any Windows 98 WINDOWS folder. Look up smartdrv on the 'Net.

At the boot floppy's DOS prompt:

first type:

smartdrv.exe
hit Enter

then switch to the CD-ROM's drive letter, typically E:\ with a Win98 boot
floppy and type:

i386\winnt.exe
hit Enter

If the routine asks where, tell it the i386 folder on the CD-ROM.

Gospel wrote:

Maybe. But if the machine's BIOS is so old as to not have a "boot from CD"
option then I would be very wary as to whether the machine is capable of
running XP in the first place......

--
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

Gordon wrote:
You really can run XP on a 233 Pentium 1 with 64 meg of RAM. I've seen
it done, wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it would be. (setting
high performance settings within XP helps)

In news:1143744542.376478.130960@t31g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com,
Terry <kilowatt@charter.net> replied with a ;-)
Detailed step by step in the article linked below, but if the system does
not have boot from CD as an option, it might be best to stay with XP.
How to clean install XP.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
xpnews@bogusmichaelstevenstech.com
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/ou...snewreader.htm

In news:OL7FcuHVGHA.5332@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl,
Michael Stevens <mstevens@bogusmvps.org> replied with a ;-)
Correction, I meant to say stay with 2000.
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
xpnews@bogusmichaelstevenstech.com
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/ou...snewreader.htm

Michael Stevens wrote:
It's pre-mature to recommend that, you'd need to hear the system specs. XP
boots faster than 2000, even on old systems. Turn off 'theming' and use the
"Classic" setting and you might easily have a better system all 'round. Yes,
XP would probably choke on a Pentium 233 with 64MB RAM, but on a Pentium II
350 with 256MB RAM and with good quality mobo and other components it might
be OK. And with WinXP SP2 there are real reasons to switch to XP beyond the
cosmetic.

Gospel wrote:


No "probably" about it. It would be so slow as to be virtually unusable.



My wife ran Windows XP with almost that exact configration (a PII-400 with
256MB) for several years. It ran, but slowly. Her needs were very slight
(E-mail, some light word processing), so it was adequate for her, but anyone
doing anything much more demanding might find it too slow.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
Agreed, and millions of people use their computers to get to a favourite
website or two, email and some word processing .. and that's it.

Gospel wrote:


And, unfortunately, THEY are exactly the kind of people who say "AV Prog?
What AV Prog?" and "Firewall? What firewall?" and thus make huge
contributions to the networks of zombie machines spewing out spam and
spyware!

--
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

Gospel wrote:

Exactly. I know several people like that. Older machines like this are fine
for them.


--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

Gordon wrote:
Exactly! That's why XP SP2 is a good idea (within reason), even if it may
not be the speediest on an older machine. The Windows Firewall etc. makes
for lower zombie activity on the Internet.

Boot from a Windows 98 startup disk, select enable CD-Rom support, navigate to the CD-ROM drive folder i386, and run winnnt.exe. This will work if your file system is FAT or FAT32.


"Gordon" <gordon@gbpcomputing.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:AY6dnSYMR9QrtbHZRVnygQ@eclipse.net.uk...