How To Boot Windows Xp From Disk

Technique

Save Time By
Demanding a Windows XP CD when you buy a new reckoner
Creating a Windows XP startup disk that bypasses key organisation files
Making an former DOS startup deejay work on your arrangement
If you lot grew upwardly in the Windows Me/98 world, yous know the importance of having an emergency boot deejay — a floppy deejay that you could stick in the drive, click Restart, and bring your estimator dorsum to life. Heck, those older versions of Windows stepped you through a complicated procedure for creating a two-disk ready that could help you cure whatever ailed Windows. And dorsum then, puhlenty ailed Windows.
When Microsoft released Windows XP, in that location was no provision whatsoever for a boot disk. "Let them eat cake!" came the cry from the Windows executives. Or words to that effect. If your PC wouldn't kick from the CD, you couldn't fifty-fifty install Windows. There was a little check box in the disk formatting dialog box that claimed it would create a kicking disk — simply the generated floppy amounted to little more than a cruel joke. Yes, it would boot your PC. No, you couldn't exercise anything much when yous booted.
Microsoft at present allows you lot to download a vi-disk collection that really does let you boot from your floppy bulldoze — merely only then you can install Windows XP from CD, naught more. The idea: If your PC won't boot from CD (perhaps the computer refuses to brand the CD drive the "boot drive"), you tin can still boot from a floppy disk — but simply if you immediately install or repair Windows. No, you lot tin can't boot from a floppy disk and and so run Windows from the CD.
Every Windows user needs a manner to get his machine running if the copy of Windows on the hard drive goes bananas. If you prepare for the trouble at present, you tin can save yourself hours or days of hassle, down the road.
This technique shows you how to brand your machine start, no affair what ails Windows.

Getting the CD You lot Deserve

Rant /ON.
When y'all purchase a new PC, y'all should become a Windows XP recovery CD to go with information technology.
That CD should
Kicking all past itself — when you stick the CD in your CD drive and restart, your computer tin can kicking from that CD and allow you to install or repair Windows XP.
Include all the Windows XP files — and then when you've booted your PC, you tin can reinstall Windows or make fresh copies of whatever munged files on your difficult drive.
If your friendly computer maker says that yous don't need a recovery CD, tell 'em to take a hike.
If they tell you all the recovery files are on the hard bulldoze, ask 'em what you're supposed to do if your difficult bulldoze dies — by far the well-nigh likely reason why yous demand a recovery CD in the kickoff identify.
If they tell you lot Microsoft is forcing them to refrain from distributing recovery CDs, laugh and have your business elsewhere.
Fifty-fifty if the company proffering all this nonsense goes past the name of HP.
When you buy a new PC, you pay for a copy of Windows XP. Make sure that yous get your re-create on a CD — one that you can concur onto and store abroad in case you ever need it. If yous bought a new PC and didn't become a CD, you were conned. Contact the visitor and complain loudly. More and more customers are getting the CD they deserve — even after they pay for their PCs — but only if they bellyache enough.
'Nuff said.
Bluster /OFF.

Creating a Boot File Bypass Disk

Once in a very blue moon, the part of your hard drive that holds Windows XP'due south initial programs — the main boot record (or MBR, as it'due south called) — volition give up the ghost. Occasionally, one of three crucial organisation files — NTLDR, boot.ini, or Ntdetect.com — can disappear. These maladies accept several symptoms, simply the nearly common occurs when you try to start your PC and you get a text message, such equally one of the post-obit:
Missing operating system. Error loading operating system. Invalid partition table. NTLDR is missing. A disk read error occurred. NTLDR is compressed.
Your MBR or the key boot files can get scrambled in any number of creative ways:
A peculiarly stupid virus tries to overwrite the MBR and doesn't practise it right.
You (or, ahem, someone else using your machine) delete a fundamental file, such as NTLDR or
boot.ini .
That role of your hard bulldoze decides it doesn't desire to work today.
You can create a disk that bypasses Windows XP's MBR and the central startup files. That deejay can come in handy if the MBR doesn't piece of work, or if (for any number of reasons) your PC refuses to boot direct from the hard drive. The big advantage to a kick file bypass disk: If it works, when yous finally go your automobile going once more, everything should work just fine. You lot have admission to all your files on all your drives, all your hardware should exist chugging abroad, and you can scramble around madly backing upwardly your files in apprehension of the possibility you take to replace your difficult drive.
If yous get to the point that y'all demand this disk, I your machine probably won't starting time, so you may take to use a friend's Windows XP machine to make the disk. There's no guarantee that a kicking file bypass disk generated on 1 machine will work on another, but I haven't hitting any problems, as long as neither machine is set upward to boot to multiple operating systems, and you aren't using SCSI drives. Your friend must be running the aforementioned version of Windows XP that you're using — XP Habitation or XP Professional — although it doesn't affair if you both have the same Service Packs installed.
The steps hither create a floppy disk that will boot your PC, bypassing the key files on your hard drive. If you don't have a floppy drive, and you're getting fault letters, your only real choice is to reinstall Windows, wiping out the erstwhile copies of those key files entirely. For instructions on performing a reinstallation, come across www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/ helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92. mspx.
To make a boot file bypass deejay
7. Put a diskette in the floppy drive.
Everything on the disk volition be overwritten.
2. Choose StartOMy Computer, right-click the floppy drive (probably A:), and choose Format.
Windows XP's Format dialog box appears, every bit shown in Effigy 67-1.
3. Blazon a volume characterization for the disk, if you wish, and so click Start.
four. When the format is complete, click OK, and then click Close.

• Effigy 67-1: Format the deejay nether Windows XP.
5. Back in Windows Explorer, double-click the C: drive (or wherever you installed Windows XP).
6, Brand certain that Windows Explorer shows you all your files: Choose Tools Folder Options View, click Bear witness Hidden Folders, and uncheck the Hide Extensions for Known File Types and Hide Protected Operating Arrangement Files (Recommended) check boxes. Click OK.
vii Under the C: drive, right-click the boot.ini file, and then choose Transport ToO3!two Floppy (A:), every bit shown in Figure 67-two.
8. Right-click the NTLDR file and cull Send ToO3l!ii Floppy (A:).
9. Right-click the Ntdetect.com file and choose Send ToO3l!2 Floppy (A:).
f0. Look for a Bootsect.dos file here in the root of the C: drive. You lot probably don't accept one, but if you exercise, correct-click it and cull Ship To Floppy (A:).

• Figure 67-ii: Send a re-create of boot.ini to the newly formatted floppy.
11% Look for a Ntbootdd.sys file hither in the root of the C: drive. You probably don't have one, only if yous do, right-click it and choose Transport To 3i2 Floppy (A:).
12. Close Windows Explorer.
The deejay yous just created should be able to boot your PC, providing that the hard drive is working and only your MBR or the key files are clobbered.

Using DOS Boot Disks — If Y'all Tin

And then where's the beefiness? Why can't you just slap an former DOS or Windows Me (or 98 or 98SE or 95 or 3.1) kick deejay in your floppy and have your PC fire upwards DOS — or whatever your particular flavor of Windows uses to call its DOS persona?
The problem: NTFS — the NT File Organization. I talk most NTFS in Technique 48.
DOS, Windows Me, Windows 98, and all their former, carefully crafted boot disks aren't smart enough to see an NTFS drive. They piece of work only with the former-fashioned FAT32 hard drive format. If you lot take an NTFS drive (and you probably do if you bought your PC with Windows XP preinstalled), you tin boot to DOS till the cows come up home, simply unless you accept some mode of seeing NTFS drives, you can't do much.
On the other hand, if all your hard drives are formatted as FAT32 drives, any former DOS boot disk works.
If yous bought a new PC with Windows XP prein-stalled, your drives virtually undoubtedly use NTFS. If you lot installed Windows XP on a PC, you may or may not have NTFS drives.
Do you accept NTFS or FAT32 drives?
To encounter if a particular bulldoze is NTFS or FAT32:
1. Choose Start My Computer.
two. Right-click the bulldoze in question and choose Properties.
Yous see the drive type listed equally the File System, equally shown in the following figure.

If you have any NTFS drives, when you kick from a DOS kicking deejay, y'all won't see any information on them. Chances are proficient yous won't get much of your hardware to work, either, because virtually modern hardware relies on drivers that don't work with DOS. That said, if you take FAT32 drives, you may be able to apply a DOS kick disk to pull the, uh, FAT out of the fryer, if Windows refuses to start. Here's how to make a DOS kicking disk:
seven. Put a disk in your floppy drive.
Everything on the disk volition exist overwritten.
ii. Choose Start My Computer, right-click the floppy bulldoze (probably A:), and click Format.
Windows XP's Format dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 67-3.
For reasons known to only a few people in ) Redmond, you tin can't format a disk and make it an MS-DOS Startup disk at the same time. You lot have to accept each step, one at a fourth dimension.

• Figure 67-3: If the disk isn't formatted, you must format it first.
3. Blazon a volume label for the boot disk, if y'all wish. If yous know the deejay is already formatted, cheque the Quick Format bank check box. (If you lot aren't sure, leave it unchecked.) Click the Get-go button.
Formatting a bare deejay from scratch is painfully deadening.
4. When the formatting finishes, click OK.
v. If the Quick Format bank check box is checked, uncheck it. Check the Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk cheque box, as shown in Effigy 67-iv. Click the Start button.
Windows XP transfers a scattering of DOS files to the disk.

• Figure 67-4: Creating an MS-DOS startup deejay.
6, When the format is complete, click OK, and so click Close.
If you have ever used the Windows Me, 98, or earlier kicking disks, you lot may be surprised — shocked — to meet what Windows XP has put on this deejay (come across Figure 67-5). Information technology's a minimally capable disk, which only barely boots, and absolutely nil more than. All sorts of files that y'all normally wait to go on a boot disk (and, in fact, are placed on the Windows Me kicking deejay) aren't even here.

• Figure 67-5: The files on the Windows XP DOS kicking disk.
None of the traditional DOS commands go on the disk (non even FDISK or SMARTDRV). The autoexec.bat file is empty, as is config.sys. At that place aren't even any CD drivers. If you lot create a DOS boot deejay using Windows XP, you need to put many more files on the deejay before you lot can do much with information technology.
Endeavour booting with this disk and you'll see that it does work — barely.
Call back of this disk every bit a starting point, not a finished product. There are two good places to go to help flesh it out with whatsoever capabilities yous demand:
To go into your NTFS drives (if you have any), you demand a free program called NTFS Reader for
DOS at world wide web.ntfs.com/products.htm. I wouldn't bet the subcontract on it, but it may solve some sticky issues.
You can detect a huge collection of DOS (and Windows Me) utilities for boot disks at www. bootdisk.com.

Creating Windows XP Setup Disks

The tertiary blazon of "kick disk" that may come up in handy has nothing to do with examining your computer in case of an emergency. The so-called Windows XP Setup Disks have only one purpose: They let y'all install Windows from a CD, even if your PC can't boot from a CD.
That's important because Windows XP, straight out of the box, tin can be installed only on PCs that can be rigged to boot from their CD drives.
Quite some time after Windows XP was originally released, Microsoft softened its approach to CD booting and released a set up of six disks that let you lot to first your estimator from floppy disk so that you tin can and then install Windows XP from CD.
Some people phone call these disks "boot diskettes," merely they aren't, really. They won't let you do anything except get-go your computer and install Windows XP from a CD. If you think you take a set of Windows XP kicking disks — which is to say, disks that permit you to kicking your machine and perform emergency maintenance — you lot're mistaken. The final version of Windows with functioning kick disks was Windows Me.
The disks are all unlike, depending on the version of XP you're installing, the Service Pack level, and the language.
When y'all run the downloaded program, you have to provide half-dozen preformatted disks. When the disks are assembled, you stick disk number one in your floppy drive, restart your machine, keep feeding it diskettes, and ultimately you get to the Windows XP setup routine, which requires you to insert the Windows installation CD in your CD drive. At that indicate, you can install or reinstall Windows. But you can't run Windows.

Source: http://what-when-how.com/windows-xp/creating-a-startup-disk-for-windows-xp/

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