How To Install Windows XP From the Hard Disk Drive

Installing Windows XP / 2003 from the hard disk drive is a bit of a bind, and I have had to do it a few times when there is no CD drive available.

To get it going – you need to have command line access to the target computer. In a situation where there is no CD drive, you can use WDS and a Windows RE WIM. I’ll not go into that right now, but here’s the command to copy the files to your target drive and install Windows onto it.

<code>winnt32.exe /tempdrive:C: /syspart:C: /makelocalsource</code>

Windows will start the first stage of the setup, and then will require a reboot. If setup carries on – then it was successful!

Imaging Made Easy With Software Deployment Services

For the IT Pro (or geek depending on your point of view), desktop deployment is a big issue.

I thought that it might be an idea to have a play with the new system before having to deal with deploying these systems down the line later on and not having a clue.

There has been some positive buzz from Microsoft about the new service, and as it is included in Windows Server 2003 SP2, I thought that it would be nice to give it a whirl.

One of the neat things about the implementation is that there is a section called ‘Windows Deploymenmt Services Legacy’ which is a new name for Remote Installation Services. Any RIS images that you had before are moved here, so that existing RIS images are not lost.