Installing WinXP on a clean HDD using Plop boot manager

[GhorMaanas]

Hello!

i recently received a refurbished 500GB HDD for my old laptop in RMA from Seagate. i wish to install WinXP on it. however, the laptop's optical drive is defunct, and nor does its BIOS support USB-boot option. i understand that i may need to use Plop boot manager to enable the USB-boot option to either boot from external optical drive using WinXP installation CD, or from a flash drive; but the HDD being clean, how to install the boot manager on it? i saw a video on youtube that tells something about using a combination of some VMware player, wintoflash, Plop boot manager as a remedy, but the video is in greek. will check it again tomorrow on my desktop, as watching it on my cell didn't help with regard to video-clarity too, so that i could atleast see properly what was the poster doing.

anyway, please suggest a solution.
thanks!

 

[gameranand]

1. Why do you want to install Win XP. Its too old and now support have also stripped away.
2. If you really do want it then use VMWare to create a virtual machine for XP and use it.

 

[GhorMaanas]

thanks! but i don't mind the lack of support. the laptop doesn't operate efficiently on Win 7. moreover, the laptop would be relegated to secondary duties and for purposes like back-up and such.
also, if am correct, wouldn't i have to install the VMware on the HDD using my desktop PC (as the HDD is clean)? would appreciate if you could please link me to some page that explains how to do that.

 

[srkmish]

XP is a great choice for old laptops. My Lenovo S10-2 crawled on Win 7 , but it is really smooth on XP.

 

[gameranand]

If the HDD is brand new then you need some device to boot from so that you can format it for further use, you can't install anything on it unless you have formatted it. Use a External DVD drive if you can.

 

[whitestar_999]

PXE Boot Windows XP, Windows7 and Vista with CCBoot - A PXE Boot Windows Software

 

[SaiyanGoku]

IMHO, instead of installing windows XP, install any linux distro in it. I would suggest Linux Mint 15.

 

[GhorMaanas]

XP is a great choice for old laptops. My Lenovo S10-2 crawled on Win 7 , but it is really smooth on XP.

relieved to read that! i kind of forgot how my laptop used to be on XP prior using Win 7 years back.

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If the HDD is brand new then you need some device to boot from so that you can format it for further use, you can't install anything on it unless you have formatted it. Use a External DVD drive if you can.

yes, its a refurbished HDD; you could say as new. using external drive won't work presently as the BIOS doesn't support booting from USB. to change that, i've to put Plop boot manager on the HDD, choose USB as boot option, and then use my external dvd-drive for installing XP. and to install Plop, i will have to first connect the laptop HDD to my desktop internally, use VMWare to install Plop on it, and then move further from there - i will try this method tomorrow and then get back here.

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PXE Boot Windows XP, Windows7 and Vista with CCBoot - A PXE Boot Windows Software

thanks! i had read about PXE while reading on booting via LAN, but dropped the idea when read about Plop, so would first try the boot manager process, and will see then.

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IMHO, instead of installing windows XP, install any linux distro in it. I would suggest Linux Mint 15.

thanks! would like to use Linux sometime, but not now. have no prior experience of using Linux, and would need to learn some basics before attempting anything of that sort.

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alright, so what i did was:

- create a bootable USB iso of Win XP using 'rufus' (drive labelled 'H')
- connect the clean laptop HDD to my desktop internally via SATA
- started VMWare player, set-up a new virtual machine and alloted it the laptop HDD
- installed Plop boot manager on the laptop HDD using VMWare player
- ran this virtual machine, booted from USB using Plop boot manager, and the Win XP set-up starts from the USB drive

however, before the set-up starts, it gives a 'EULA not found' error and quits. through some searching, found that using rufus to create a bootable USB-drive for installing XP on a virtual machine may not work, but sometimes playing with the BIOS ID in the 'advanced format options' of rufus' menu prior formatting the USB-drive could help avoid the EULA error. going to try that now, else, will try 'WinSetUpFromUSB' (apparently, the most used ware for creating bootable pen-drives for OS installations) for formatting the USB-drive and check.

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i didn't know why i didn't attempt it earlier, but after encountering recurring EULA errors upon changing the BIOS ID, it struck me to unmount the Plop boot manager virtual disk from my virtual drive (since Plop had already been installed), mount my Win XP CD onto the physical drive of my desktop and disregard the USB-drive installation effort, change the boot-order in the virtual machine to choose 'CD-DVD ROM' instead of 'removable devices', and then try the set-up. initially it didn't work (because i didn't restart the virtual machine after inserting the Win XP disc in the drive), but after sometime, when i was just casually sifting through the boot manager, it worked! and as am writing this, the OS installation is underway! am expecting 1-2 errors upon completion of the set-up, but i guess am prepared for that! hoping for the better now!

once am done, successfully, i would post a detailed summary of how i went about all this.

 

[gameranand]

Tell you what, just attach the HDD to your desktop, install the OS and then put it back in your laptop, no issues, easy peasy.

 

[GhorMaanas]

Tell you what, just attach the HDD to your desktop, install the OS and then put it back in your laptop, no issues, easy peasy.

hehe. have done the same thing, successfully now! but got stuck at another point just now! was installing the HDD into my laptop, when i realised that the SATA connector is missing! will have to now search the local mkt. for it.

 

[whitestar_999]

to make this process even more easier use sysprep OOBE Generalize option & shutdown & remove hdd.after that you can put hdd in any new system & windows will automatically select drivers for new hardware(lesser chances of BSOD).