Installing Windows XP using an external USB CD-ROM, DVD-ROM drive.

Due to high demands for portability and technological advances, laptops are getting smaller and faster. They are now as small as a notebook and just as productive as a workstation. Unfortunately, the smaller laptops are smaller because essential devices, such as CDROMs and floppy disk drives, are externally connected. To add to the problem, companies often use proprioteiry connections to these devices. What happens when it breaks and the replacement is twice as much as other external USB drives? What if you have to boot off of a CD to re-install an operating system because you just upgraded your new hard drive? What if your operating system is corrupted and you would like to start over new? All of these situations have one thing in common. It poses the question: How do I get the Windows Boot CD to boot off of my external CDROM if my bios doesn’t support booting from USB? The steps below will save you a lot of time and frustration.

1. Download the USB DOS driver and Save the file to your hard drive.
2. Use Winzip to extract the file. If you do not have the Winzip program you may get a shareware version here.
3. Extract the file, then open the folder named USBboot and execute the rawrite2.exe.
4. When prompted for the image name, enter dosboot.img
5. Enter the floppy drive as your destination drive, which in general is the A:
6. When it is done, reboot with this disk to use the USB devices.
7. If everything went well, you should have a drive R: for the CDROM drive. You are now ready to copy the I386 folder from the Windows 2000 or XP installation CD to the hard drive.
8. Hard Drives will most likely be C: (the next letter available).
9. At the prompt, go to the CDROM drive (R:) and run “Xcopy *.* /s C:”
10. Now go to the I386 folder (C:I386) then type Winnt.
11. Installation should now start. Follow instruction from your Operating System manual on how to install the OS. (Installation will take some time, Please be patient)