How to create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows XP? How to reinstall Windows XP from a USB flash drive

Despite the fact that in April this year will completely stop supporting Windows XP, it still continues to be one of the most popular computer OS. But recently it is rarely put on powerful working machines, preferring to use it in netbooks.

Here only there is one small problem: XP installation is theoretically possible only from a CD-ROM, drives for which these devices do not. What to do? After all, putting Linux is most often meaningless, since new varieties of popular distributions simply will not "pull" a weak "iron"!

Flash drive - our choice!

Of course, you can attach a portable CD / DVD drive to the netbook, but why are there extra problems? After all, there is a USB port on it anyway. Therefore, the question is only how to create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows XP. At once we will notice, what to make it on forces to any user.

A bit about media

First, you need to pay attention to the media used. Do not think that for this purpose any flash card bought in the nearest store will do. However, you can install the system on it, but here the speed of work in this case will be very low.

Start with the volume. The minimum allowed is 4 GB. In this case (if you have experience and desire) you can create a multi-boot USB flash drive Windows XP. It will easily accommodate not only the system, but also various useful utilities.

The next important parameter is the speed of reading and writing. Cheap models are characterized by 2-3 MB / sec for writing, the reading parameters rarely exceed 8-12 MB / sec. Agree that it is not the best idea to buy a 32 GB storage medium, the data on which will be recorded for several hours. And this often happens when buyers are tempted by the low cost of Chinese products.

Often on the shelves in general you can see flash drives at 256 GB, the manufacturer of which is the famous "NoName". Do not take such removable disks, since their capacity almost always does not match the claimed, and they break instantly.

So, before you create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows XP, you need to go to a specialized store. Do not spare money on a normal medium, which will please you with a high ratio of rewriting cycles and speed.

"WinSetupFromUSB 1.3"

First, let's take a look at an example when using the wonderful program "WinSetupFromUSB 1.3". Its peculiarity is that it is somewhat difficult to make a bootable Windows XP flash drive, but with it, even the oldest computer (if only there was a USB port) will boot from it without problems.

Another good news is that there are versions for 32- and 64-bit systems. So even with the new Windows 8 you will not experience any problems.

Where to begin?

First, get a normal image of Windows XP itself. It is strongly recommended not to use so-called "assemblies", as their performance can not be guaranteed by anyone! Format the USB flash drive is not necessary, because the program will do everything for you.

Running

Note that the utility "WinSetupFromUSB 1.3" does not need to be installed in the installation, so you can make a bootable USB flash drive of Windows XP without loading the computer with unnecessary programs. To start it, you need to right-click on the executable file, then select "Run as administrator" in the context menu.

We look at the very first item called "UDB disk selection an format tools". Clicking on the icon of the drop-down list, you will see a list of all USB-carriers that are in the system. Select the desired USB flash drive. Be careful, otherwise you can lose your important data!

The next item is "Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 Setup". In it, you must specify either the path to the physical media (optical disk), or to the virtual drive on which the disk with the system is mounted. Pay attention to the points below: if you need a multi-boot flash drive (Windows XP + Vista / 7), mark them, indicating the location of other media.

A little move away from the topic. We already said that for the best result you will need the image of the OS you intend to run from a removable disk. It is best to do it yourself, using the programs "Alcohol 52%" or "UltraISO".

Immediately after clicking the "OK" button, the "Microsoft Widows EULA" license agreement screen appears before you, which you will have to agree to ("I Accept"). Note that in the main window of the program there is a button "Auto format it with FBinst". You do not need to touch it. When you activate it, a special utility is run to prepare the media. There is nothing wrong with it, but Windows XP written so does not run on all computers.

Boot Record

But, before creating a bootable USB flash drive with Windows XP, you will need the "RMPrepUSB" button. It will also launch a utility that will write the MBR loader and prepare the recording media.

So, we click on the button with the same name, after which the dialog "RMPrepUSB v.2.1.714" appears before us. Before proceeding, make sure that the flash drive is in the topmost field! Sometimes it happens that inattentive users mark their own hard disk in this field. If it's bootable (on which the OS is installed), then the system itself will not let you do anything. But if there is a collection of some media files on it, the results can be very sad ...

In the field called "Boot sector", check the box "XP / BsrtPE bootable [NTLDR]". We go below, to the point "File system", where we mark the position "FAT32" (as it is more universal). On the contrary, there is a checkbox for the option "Boot as HDD [C: 2PTNS]".

Before you create a bootable USB flash drive with Windows XP, we just need to click on the "Preparing the disk" button. There will be a small dialog box in which you need to press OK. A warning will immediately pop up that all files will be deleted when formatting. We press OK, after which we wait for some time to finish the work. When everything is ready, you need to click the "Exit" button, and then close the "RMPrepUSB" utility dialog.

Direct system recording

Again, go to the main dialog box "WinSetupFromUSB 1-3". Here you must enable the "Show Log" option. More precisely, there is no special need for a visual display of the process, but it is much more reliable, because if something goes wrong, you will see at what stage the process has stalled.

If this happens, then you can search for a solution to your problem. As a rule, some problems often arise only in the event that there is some defect of the flash drive. If it's new, you can try to make a complete data format (remember to uncheck the box "Quick Format").

All! Press the button "GO", then start the process of recording working files on the USB flash drive. Typically, it takes about 15 minutes, but the time here depends entirely on the characteristics of your computer. The signal of complete completion of work is the appearance of the message "Job done". We press on "OK", we wait a little while the program appends last kilobytes of the information on a carrier. Everything, he is ready to use!

How does it all work?

What to do next, and how to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive? Here everything is quite simple, but you need to give some explanations. The fact that the carrier is better to connect not to the front, but to the rear connectors. This is due to the fact that the front ports often produce a lower speed, and the stability of the work can not always boast.

Turn off the computer. We insert the USB flash drive into a suitable port and turn on the machine again. The procedure for entering the BIOS for a long time to paint does not make sense. Typically, the input is performed by pressing (preferably multiple) the DEL button on the keyboard, but laptops and netbooks often have other options. They need to find out by reading the instructions to your gadget.

In order to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive, you need to set the corresponding item in the BIOS settings. How to do it, you again have to look in the instructions to your device.

After the start, the loader window "Grub4Dos" appears in front of you. It will have one item - "Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 Setup". Accordingly, if you created a multi-boot flash drive, then there will be more. Click on "Enter", go to the next menu.

To reinstall Windows XP from a USB flash drive, select the "First part of Windows XP Professional SP3 setup from partion 0" item. After that, the same installation process will be performed, which would be launched during installation from the optical compact disc.

And if you need additional programs?

All of the above applies only in cases where you need a convenient and practical media for installing the system. And what to do when a "lifebuoy" is needed, on which there will be an antivirus, a program for defragmentation and something else?

The answer is one - you need a boot flash drive with utilities! Since we have already started talking about XP, we will not consider only a flash drive with programs. We are not afraid of difficulties, are we? Then proceed!

"WinSetupFromUSB"

Naturally, we again will use a very useful, compact and quick program. By the way, the same is created and live-flash drive Windows XP. Not strong in terminology? Then we will explain that this is the name of a flash drive, which you can boot from, having got a completely working Windows OS.

If you are often forced to work on other people's computers, then you will understand all the advantages of this approach. However, enough words. There is an important point. Since we need a USB flash drive with a system and various programs, we'll have to look for the image ourselves. Of course, it can be created independently, but for beginners this task is actually beyond the power.

Run the program as administrator. We will not repeat, since all instructions are above. Immediately after the launch, you will see a rather ascetic dialog box, at the top of which there is a drop-down list. As you might guess, clicking it will display a list of all the flash drives that are currently connected to the computer.

Make the media bootable

The creator suggests exactly two methods for this: "Bootice" and "RMPrepUSB". Since the first is much simpler and more understandable, we suggest that you use it. What does it take to do this?

First, click on the "Bootice" button. A small dialog box will open immediately, in which you need to activate the "Perform Format" option (the rightmost button). The next dialog is the most important. So, if you plan to use your USB flash drive in a pair with old and not too new BIOS, we recommend that you select the option "USB-FDD". But! This is not the way to create a multi-boot, and therefore most often have to apply the item "USB-HDD mode" ("Multiple Partitions"). It is recommended to choose NTFS as the file system, but FAT32 is also suitable.

By the way, why did we recommend the "Multiple" mode? The fact is that in this case USB flash drive (boot drive) Windows XP will not only allow you to run the OS in live mode, but also save the necessary files to the media.

We click on the button "Next-Step", we agree with all warnings that in case of an error your data will be irretrievably lost. Click "OK" and wait. If you do not have a very powerful machine, this may take a relatively long time.

Copying installation files

To do this, select the item in the main dialog box of the program, at the very end of which there is the phrase "BartPE". Next, click on the ellipsis button, point the program to the directory where the disk image is stored.

After that press the button "GO" and wait for the end of the process. We recommend that you check the "Show Log" option. As in the case that we described above, this will allow you to follow the process. After the successful completion of the process, you have on hand a bootable USB flash drive Windows XP. The startup program starts after setting the appropriate settings in the BIOS. Since we talked about this above, we will not repeat ourselves.

Using other programs to create bootable media

Since the names of all the above utilities are hardly familiar to ordinary users, we'll talk about simpler options. So, help create a bootable USB flash drive "UltraISO". It is very easy to do this.

As in all previous cases, you will need a normal image of a clean system.

Having launched "UltraISO" (again in administrator mode), go to the "File-Open" path, specify the path to the image of the system, then click the "Open" button in the dialog box. To get a bootable USB flash drive from ISO, the next step is to go to the menu item "Boot-Burn Image of Hard Disk".

A dialog box opens in which you need to select the USB flash drive to which you will write OS files. We set the option "USB-HDD" or another, guided by our instructions above.

Have you chosen? Then click on the "Record" button. You again will be warned about the irretrievable destruction of data that can be on the flash drive. There's definitely nothing there? Then we press "OK", the carrier will be formatted. We drink tea, watch a movie or do something similar until the window pops up with a notification of the completion of the process. All! You can install Windows XP through a USB flash drive.

Other options

It would be a mistake to say that this ends all available options. There are more than one hundred utilities for creating bootable disks , and therefore it is simply impossible to describe all of them in an article.

But we will talk about another utility that is well known to "advanced" domestic users. It's about the command line program.

So Windows XP on a USB flash drive with its help to create also it will turn out. There is it on every computer with Windows.

View details

First, it must be run as administrator. To do this, you must click on the "Start" button, type "cmd" in the search bar. The list of found files will open in the right part of the window. On the right file, we right-click, then select the same item "Run as administrator".

If you do this in Windows 8 / 8.1, the order of the operation is slightly different. First, you need to go to "ModernUI" (also known as "Metro"), click on the small arrow "Down", which is located in the lower left corner. For devices with a touch screen, you can simply scroll down.

A window with a list of installed programs opens, in the upper right corner of which there is a search field. We drive into it "CMD", after which the result of the search will open. Right-click the desired program. At the bottom of the window (there are no context menus here!) A list of possible actions appears. As you understand, you need to select "Run as administrator".

Then in the opened console print the line (or you can just copy it) "DISKPART". This command launches a special software shell, which allows you to manage disks (including removable ones).

The next command is "List disk". If you know a little English, you can see for yourself that it displays a list of external disks. It is advisable to connect only one USB flash drive to the computer, otherwise you may well be mistaken. If Windows XP does not see the USB flash drive in this mode, try to format it in the FAT32 file system.

How to do it? Open My Computer, right-click the USB flash drive, select Format. Naturally, if there is not a removable disk even in this folder, then it is better to change it. It clearly has some kind of malfunction, because of which you can lose all your data.

After that, enter the command "Clean", which will further clean the disk. After the message about the completion of the process "Disk Cleanup was completed successfully", enter the line "Create partition primary". It creates the primary active partition.

The next command is "Select partition 1". It allows you to select the previously created partition. The option "Active" will make it active.

We recommend formatting your drive by typing the command "Format fs = NTFS" for this. If you have a FAT32 file system, replace the corresponding part of the command. We enter "Exit", on which our "console epic" ends.

Then we copy all the necessary files to a removable disk. How to do it? If you have downloaded an ISO image, then you can use any available archiver ("7-ZIP", for example). Run the program, go to the "File-Open" path, where you specify the path to the image file. All you unpack to your flash drive, prepared as described above.

Attention! The described method does not give 100% guarantee of starting the installation program on the old hardware, so if you have such a need, it is better to use the method that was described in our article the very first.

Other nuances

Of course, we have already talked about how you can make a disk with the system and utilities "in one bottle". But what if you only need one program that you can run from under the BIOS?

The decision is no different from what we did before. For example, consider the program "Acronis", a bootable flash drive with which you will be able to resize partitions, make a hard disk partition or perform full and irreversible formatting.

The easiest way

In this case, we need the "Acronis True Image" installed on the computer. The set of programs is very useful, so we recommend installing it in "preventive purposes". After running the utility, the first dialog box opens before you.

In it we select the item "Go to the main window". The following window opens, in which you need to activate the "Create bootable media" item. The "Master" opens, with which you will perform all subsequent operations. Click in the first window "Next" to get to the next setting item.

In it, you need to check the "True image Home" option. Again we press "Next", we get to the window with the choice of removable media. Choose your own, then again the "Next". After that, another window will come out, in which at last there will be a button "Proceed". After a while (depending on the characteristics of your computer), a message will appear that the bootable USB flash drive was completed.

The second way

This time, you should have an image of "Acronis True Image". To write it to the media, we use the "WinSetupFromUSB" program, which we already described at the very beginning of the article. The process is practically the same as that already considered by us.

First, run the utility as administrator. In the first window we also choose our flash drive, but then we go the other way.

We click on the button "RMPrepUSB". The window of the additional utility will start, in which you again need to specify your media. We mark the option (BOOT OPTIONS) "NTLDR", in the file system selection line we set "NTFS". Be sure to check the box next to "Boot as HDD" and "Use 64hd". You do not need to mark anything else, so you can safely click on the "Prepare Drive" button.

A small window will pop up with a warning to start the process. Click "OK". After that, you will see the second dialog box, where you are warned that as a result of formatting all data will be destroyed.

Once again, make sure that there is no data on the disk that is of any value to you. If you make a mistake, it will be difficult to restore them (if at all possible).

Agree, again clicking on "OK". For some time, the formatting will be performed, after which we will be redirected back to the main program window. Here you need to check the checkbox for the item whose name begins with "PartedMagic". Here we click on the ellipsis button. The "Explorer" opens, in which you will show the utility where the "Acronis True Image" image is located.

Press the button "GO" and wait until the message "Job Done" appears on the monitor. All! Bootable media with the utility is ready!