Installing XP... Please Help.

Thunderhorse

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Feb 6, 2008
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Have a new Hard drive... Trying to set up XP.
I will spare you the long story... Short story
I have a valid version of XP Home... BUT the actual Disc is long lost.
I have a Valid LEGAL serial Key but no physical disc.

Through some "means" I have downloaded the same version of windows.
It came with all the files inside compressed.
I assume i must uncompress all these files first. When I did that it looked like a normal instal disc looks like.

But need to burn my own install disc. I have tried everything...
Burning a straight data disc... Burning a Iso format of the files.
Creating a disc image then burning that on a disk. But nothing works.

Pleas help me out if you know how to do this..
 
Thunder give me your email, i will try and get you access to a solution. Also, keep in mind the same version that you got can be meant to be installed form the Hard Drive, not from a Disc. Without knowing exactly what you got installing, is it a boot disc, an upgrade, etc., it is hard to offer a solution for that.
 
what type of file is the file that you downloaded? what is the file extension?

-Blue
 
I should add that the setup will extract the compressed files when it installs. There are tricks to get it to install from the HD, like copy the i386 folder to HD and run the setup form there. YOu need to boot into DOS on NTSF though, which can be tricky. Or run it on a FAT32 partition and convert, but that can be problematic as well.
 
My Email is [email protected]

I will attempt to explain what I have.

When I downloaded the file It was a single 526.6 MB Folder.
Containing the following 39 items.
e-xpho3.r00
e-xpho3.r01
e-xpho3.r02
e-xpho3.r03
(ect)
(ect)
(ect)
e-xpho3.r34
e-xpho3.r35
e-xpho3.rar
e-xpho3.sfv
eth0.nfo

When I fiddled around the decompressor program "wrar"
I was able to create a 526.6 mb folder containing the following.
AUTORUN.INF
DOCS
DOTNETFX
ETH0
1386
README.HTM
SETUP.EXE
SETUPXP.HTM
SUPPORT
VALUEADD
WIN51
WIN51|C
win51.SP3

I underlined the items that were folders.. There was much more inside those folders but you get the picture.

I made what i thought was a disk image..
It was a 572.2MB item called
Image.nrg

Again my email is [email protected]
I would greatly appreciate some help.. I'm running on Mac alone with no games till I can get this figured out. I will of coarse peruse other venues of help but I would appreciate anything my fellow clan mates can come up with.

Again thanks
 
The e-xpho3.r00 files are an archive that the person broke down the XP install so it can be gotten in pieces. That you do extract and you get the second part. The second part you burn on a CD and run on your computer. It should run setup and you can start the set up. You need to create a partition on your HD, should be a NTSF, then you should, i strongly recommend you do a full install, format it. If its a big HD it will take some time for a full format, but it is much more stable.
 
I have a partition already made and set aside for this..
I am actually doing this on a mac using boot camp.

Im to the part where it tells me to insert a Install Disc.
I put it in and it says "no installation disc can be found"

SO I guess I need to know exactly how to burn the disc.
Do i burn a straight data disc with this stuff inside
AUTORUN.INF
DOCS
DOTNETFX
ETH0
1386
README.HTM
SETUP.EXE
SETUPXP.HTM
SUPPORT
VALUEADD
WIN51
WIN51|C
win51.SP3

Or do I need to do something special???
 
If that fails, try downloading an ISO of XP. Generally those work better than archives of files.
 
Yea, an ISO is already in a burnable format, they're much easier to use.

If you can get an ISO tool such as MagicISO or PowerISO or UltraISO, you could compress all those files exactly as they are right now (all the files on the top-level of the disc) as an .ISO format, and use any burning program to burn that.

You could do that, or just download Windows XP already as an ISO. :)
 
I answered this in the PM, the problem that he might have is with the DRM. You lose that in an archive format, while an image file preserves the DRM. But this is getting too gray for me to discuss in detail here, as dealing with issues like this is not very kosher.
 
ThunderHorse, it looks like you uncompressed the the iso/nrg/bin/cue.


Ask ThunderPwny (Co-worker) for my email address if you would like some help. Believe it or not I am a little knowledgeable about the subject.

If you need some free software to burn image files look at the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImgBurn


IMPORTANT!!! BURN AT THE LOWEST SPEED!!!
 
Last edited:
Yeah you extracted the ISO. Don't extract it. Just burn that file you downloaded. It's already an ISO.

Winrar seems to read those as an ectractable file.
 

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