I have a fully licensed version of XP Pro but I've been having trouble installing it since I installed a SATA hard drive. The SATA drive needs to have the controller driver installed before it can install windows. Not a problem for those that have a floppy drive but I shot my last floppy drive at the range about two years ago.

I've been told that Service Pack 1 fixed this issue but there's no way I'm going to run out and drop another $200 on a license just so I can install windows again. Can I somehow get a new full install CD with SP1 from Microsoft if I give them my license? If not, is there any other funky solution like tricking the installer to read from a USB drive instead of A:\?

 

You have XP without SP1?? Damn......

Dude, floppy drives are like $10 www.pricewatch.com Or, you could get a free SP2 CD from microsoft and just upgrade the current OS.... I could have sworn that you could have those drivers on a thumbdrive and load them from there durring windows setup....

 

or use a utility like nlite http://nuhi.msfn.org/nlite.html to build a XP cd with the servicepack and any drivers that you need slipstramed right into the CD.

We do this at the office as we have a lot of newer machines that require a lot of drivers, and instead of haveing to load them during or after the install, they are already on the CD so the install goes through without a problem

 

Two thoughts. First, I've heard that in some BIOS's, if you set USB as the second boot device right after the CDROM, then Windows setup can see a flash drive during setup. Completely dependent on on the machine and the BIOS version, but I've spoken with two people that claimed to have done this.

Second thought, is your place a Microsoft volume licensing customer? If so, then you should be able to buy a media kit with SP2 built-in for a minimal amount of money.

 

Do a search on how to create a XP disk with SP1, and that should do it.

 

slipstream is the way to go, or create a bootable CD and pull from an image.

 

I've tried loading the drivers via my usb drive but I guess my bios just wont support it. It's an older Asus A7V8X so that's not surprising.

I'll give the slipstream a go. It just seems like a lot of work for something that Microsoft should be giving out for free or at least for just media costs plus shipping. I could download a bootlegged version of XP tonight and be done with it but because I want to keep things legit I have to go through all this.

Thanks for the help and I'll probably have some questions for you guys once I get into slipstream.

 

This license is for my home machine. I have volume licensing at work but I only run W2K on all the machines.

 

Along with slipstreaming SP1 you can also add the specific drivers for the SATA controller to that disk so you no longer have to worry about it, just in case SP1 does not fix the issue...

 

Ya for sure. If I'm going through the trouble of creating a slipstream disk, I might as well make one with all the drivers, SP2, and any other patches that are currently available.

 

 

This slipstreaming is pretty pimp. I'm making custom ISOs for my machines at work right now. Thanks for the recommendation.