Windows boot errors

[Sparkfist]

Hey guys. I'm trying to install Windows XP on a couple of Aspire One netbooks. These came with Linux installed and I need to have window on them instead. I've gotten to the point that I can boot Windows via external CD-ROM, but with official copies I get errors after it loads the basic drivers, before I even get to the License Agreement.

I looked up on of these errors, and one is related to Windows power management on laptops. Is there a way to patch a CD, by-pass this check, or something so I can get XP to start the installation? I was able to t get one setup and working with some effort but this one and (I fear) the other are giving me nothing but trouble and frustration.

Any help would be appreciated.

-Sparkfist

[bicostp]

You can use nLite to modify XP install discs; it may have some way to disable the checks for that system. At this point you might want to slipstream SP3 in as well.

[XCVG]

The Aspire One needs some special kind of Windows. There's probably a hack out there.

[nitro2k01]

I'm guessing you'll need SP3 for the Atom CPU. Try to slipstream a disc with SP3 and see if it works.

[Sparkfist]

You guys are going to get a laugh out of this. Just because we need them in a hurry, and I'm not one to have the time or patients to make an XP SP3 bootable thumb drive, we kept booting it getting a different error each time. Finally it just worked. Lots of files failed to to be loaded in, but I can do a repair to fix that... hopefully.

I do want to get an XP SP3 image on a thumb drive though. That would make reformatting my own Aspire One easier. And I took a brief look at nlite, but are there other out there that can be used to make an image for thumb drives? Seriouslly I have a 2GB drive that I originally planned to run slax off of, but now (sad to say) XP would be more useful on it.

Thanks for the help guys. I'll try to look at nlite tonight and see what I can do to improve the XP images I'm using.

-Sparkfist

[nitro2k01]

If it wasn't for the fact that Windows doesn't like removable drives with a partition table, you could easily use the stick for both. However, you could still make it work, since slax could possibly use FAT32 as its main FS. (Even if you might encounter some problems if you do that) It would be along the lines of getting GRUB4DOS to load either the kernel or the Windows installer. I have used GRUB4DOS before, but I haven't done this particular procedure.
Or, get a cheap 1 GB stick for Windows. (With a little trimming you could even get away with a 512 MB stick, which would be even cheaper these days)

[Sparkfist]

Well I've seen some posts about booting 2003 first in order to get the media loaded and start the install. I'd assume that 2003 would work on booting UBS as it's more robust and feature rich OS then XP.

Oh by the way, if any of you can answer this quick question. Is there a reason I would have use something like the HP flash utility to format a drive to load XP on it? Does windows not have the choice to set a partition in it's format tool to be primary? Cause if that's all it is, could I get away with using gParted?

-Sparkfist

[bicostp]

I don't think XP's built-in format utility lets you make any removable storage besides floppies bootable, but the HP utility does.

[adam_d]

Sparkfist, are you still talking about installing XP from a USB drive or actually running it from the USB drive? If you want to install, there are a couple of tutorials over at Aspire one user, this being the one that worked best for me:

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/view ... =38&t=8151

That was using an nlited SP3 disc, and then I decided to keep the preinstalled Linux on there, so now I run XP from a 4gb USB stick if I ever need it on there, I usually just use my main PC if I need Windows.
Any help you need, that's probably the best place to find it.

Hope that helps