On 14/09/2011 13:40, David WE Roberts wrote:
Possibly slightly on topic as I am looking for a DIY solution :-)
As usual, posting here because of the wealth of IT knowledge.

Briefly, Windows XP has an historical flaw.
Despite having the underlying capability to handle USB devices at boot
time it doesn't configure the USB drivers fully until part way through
the boot.
This means that you can start booting from a USB HDD if your BIOS
supports it but XP then does something to USB which means it won't read
from a USB HDD during the critical parts of the boot sequence.
Sadly, the drivers are all there, just not declared in the correct way
and in the correct places of the configuration files and registry.

Google has found me far too much information but there are so many
competing resources out there that it is proving very difficult to find
a simple definitive solution.
I have a long description about how to produce a modified XP
installation disc which will populate the configuration files and
registry during the first part of the install.
I am now wondering this; as I have completed the first stage of the
installation of XP which involves formatting the USB HDD to NTFS,
copying the XP files across, and populating the registry hives could I
modify the configuration files and registry entries on the HDD directly
instead of having to go through a number of steps to unpack the ISO,
modify the files, then rebuild a new ISO before creating a new CD?

So before I embark on a long and frustrating sequence of investigations
I thought I would ask if anyone else on the NG had solved the problem,
and if so which route they took.

To be absolutely clear, I want to install to and run XP from a 40Gb
external USB HDD.
I don't want to use the HDD to install on my internal drive (which at
4Gb SSD in an EEE PC 900 is too small to comfortably run XP).
I have an external USB CD/DVD drive to use for my XP CD.
I want to use XP because I have bought the OEM CD which proved to me
that running XP from the SSD is too much like hard work.

Any advice and previous experience more than welcome.

Cheers

Dave R

AIUI, you can only boot via USB using a FAT32 file system, ie NOT ntfs.

I could be wrong and no doubt others will correct me.

Another Dave