Install Window XP from an ISO Image and Firadisk
25 October 2009 – 8:56 am · diperbarui: 9 Nov 2009A week ago, accidently my Acer laptop has been repartitioned and reformatted before preparing XP installation media. Yes, I have Window XP on CD media, but I don’t want to use it because I made a modified version for my own laptop: an unattended installation with SP3 slipstreamed, recent up-to-date hotfixes, stripped out many services, components, built-in drivers came with original XP installation media to reduce size of my XP, built up with my own laptop drivers, and integrated with recent IE version and Windows Media Player. So, the best choice for me is trying to install Window XP from media I have to make and using Firadisk Driver as I mentioned before.
Firstly, It’s not so easy as I expected. No, maybe that’s happened because I’ve tried another method. For the first time, I didn’t use Firadisk Driver from Floppy Disk while Installing XP, but trying to install it from T-39 Stage. Many files that have been configured and prepared for unattended installation lost from my hard disk several months ago. It’s about 8 GB packed on WIM image and I am being lazy to make a new one or search it again on internet. I don’t expect this method, meanly installing Firadisk driver from T-39 Stage, will be finished successfully, but there is nothing wrong to try. Yes, it’s not success because the installation must be can access drive before it’s begun, while at T-39 Stage Window XP installation executes DetachedProgram from winnt.sif on GUI-mode setup. That is at second reboot of installation.
CMIIW, FiraDisk Driver must be loaded first time at Text-mode setup, as we made for RAID/SATA/SCSI drivers. So, if we don’t prepare FiraDisk driver on Floppy Disk, we must make some modification on TXTSETUP.SIF and WINNT.SIF to load the driver. Read the tutorial how to perform this method from MSFN website. I have no time because my laptop has been repartitioned and reformatted accidently, so no other choice except making FiraDisk Floppy Image, bundling XP installation to an bootable ISO image. Note: the ISO image of our XP files must be bootable or the installation will not start. You can read the tricks of this method from this forum.
Best choice of boot image to use is extracted boot sector from your XP installation CD or by making the ISO image from the original CD installation. Add your FiraDisk Floppy image and ISO image to your device, like UFD. Use Grub or Grub4Dos to make your device bootable and add the following configuration to you menu entries:
title XP setup from iso
find –set-root /xp.iso
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map –mem /firadisk.ima (fd1)
map –mem (md)0×6000+800 (fd0)
map –mem /myxp.iso (0xff)
map –hook
dd if=(fd1) of=(fd0) count=1
chainloader (0xff)title Continue XP setup
find –set-root /myxp.iso
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map –mem /myxp.iso (0xff)
map –hook
chainloader (hd0)+1
This is original copy from the manual instruction. Please see the up-to-date discussion about guide of XP installation from an ISO image and FiraDisk driver. My experiment is not using original ISO boot from XP CD, but using Syslinux and Grub4Dos. So, I have to choose from menu entries twice: from the first boot and from the ISO image boot. This is because of my ISO image not just containing XP files, Linux and other OS too. Actually, I have to boot from the Grub Shell command prompt. Mapping drive method confused in my case.
Most important thing is to remember about Grub boot method. If you boot using Grub from your UFD, it’s become (hd0) and your second drive will be the (hd1). In my case, first boot using Grub makes my UFD as (hd0) and when my ISO image boot secondly, using Grub too, my drive (0xFF) that mapped from the ISO become (hd0) too. Please note this to the code above: map (hd0) (hd1); map (hd1) (hd0), not always like that.
Finally, Firadisk Driver really an useful tool you must try. The basic idea is to access RAM drive from an image file while running OS kernel protected mode. Now, with this great tool, we can install, and run, Window XP from ISO or any image drive. Just read more details tutorial, manual, guide, scripts to perform the tasks easily, and discussion from this forum: FiraDisk Driver, Creating Disk Image, install Windows XP from an ISO file without editing the Windows installation media, winbuilder script by oriensol, identifying the registry and txtsetup.sif entries for creating a RAM Loading Windows PE (XP and 2003 Based) by joakim, and detailed breakdown of the Windows 2000/XP Master Boot Record (including disk signature). Enjoy with your experiments.
Tags: boot drivers, Firadisk, Grub, unattended, Windows, XP Installation
