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!