Anyone Want to Have XP running off USB ?

ok ive noticed some people are trying to run linpus off a usb flash drive and running xp on their AAO internal HD/SSD. im wondering if anyone would like a how to do the opposite - leaving linpus on the internal storage and having xp on ext usb harddrive/flash drive. as i have way to do this that works remarkably well

 

I"m interested in hearing

 

if someone can tell me a waty to disable the aaos internal hd temporarily i can do this otherwise its a non starter

 

Can't you do that via the bios?

 

have you looked at the bios on the AAO, you cant do nothing in it, much less disable hard drive controllers

 

Yes I had, but not with the idea of disabling a hard drive since I don't have a hard drive in mine. I just thought I would offer the idea in case it may work.

 

A USB HD is fast enough to run XP/Vista without problems. A Flash drive is not good enough, writing is so painfully slow.

I use VMware and I tried both ways, the results should be about the same with or without vmware.

 

yep im aware of that - ive done usb xp before (on an old fujitsu tablet pc on which the internal ide ribbon had snapped) and it was quite nippy, got xp and linpus dualbooting on my aao at the moment tho now

 

Hold on, how can you get Vista running on USB? It's possible with XP, but Vista...

Mind explaining here?

 

vista cant be done, microsft changed the install procedure to block people from doing it, , xp can be done fairly simply, but ive got xp installed on internal hd on my AAO and have linpus bootloader setup to let me choose what to run on boot

 

i have an howto for triple booting the aao on my blog now if anyone wants to do it

 

It would be nice if you could post it here too, my friend!

 

the link to my blogs in my sig, it would take probably 3 posts to copy it here since its huge .... but since you asked ... its going to follow


this howto although it says its for a triple boot ysstem im going to write for dual boot and add in bbits regarding the triple boot as needed because its simple to do the triple os

NOTICE: these instructions are written to work on a AAO with a 120gb hd, i do not know if this will work for SSD versions (it probably will be you wont have much disk space remaining for either os)

Required items:

1. Another pc to read these instructions

2. AT LEAST 1 pen drive/external HD (must be minimum of 1gb preferably) , i recommend 2 drives, i used a 1gb usb pen an a 500gb ext hd for various parts.)

3. A copy of windows xp (any version doesnt matter)

4. copies of the applications below - download them all before your start

HP USB Drive Key Format Utility: http://www.dmpwap.net/aspireone/SP27608.exe

Gparted-Live zip archive: http://www.dmpwap.net/aspireone/gparted ... .3.9-4.zip

Live USB Helper: http://www.dmpwap.net/aspireone/DRBL-luh-0.0.8.exe
5. A basic grasp of linux command line based text editing would be useful - not required

Thats all the requirements i can think of currently. this will work on a 512mb ram AAO also so no real special upgrades are needed. it goes without saying that you should always make a backup of your AAO before attempting this procedutre as it involves messing with resizing partitions and things which if done incorrectly may result in data loss.

How-To

1. Firstly install the hp drive key util and live usb helper applications on your other computer, and insert your small usb pen (if your using 2 seperate pens/drives) and let windows recognise it, then run live usb helper and select your pen from the appropriate drop down box then hit format and format again, this should automaticly format the drive first off then return you to the main screen.

2. Now click install image file and browse to the location of the gparted live zip file you downloaded. then hit install.

3.once installed click the make usb drive bootable button and once complete quit live usb helper. remove the drive from your computer and plug into your AAO. any USB port will work.

4. boot your AAO and hit F12 to get the boot menu and choose your usb pen from the list then hit enter, if the bootable drive works you’ll get a menu with muliple options, just hit enter to pick the top option and wait patiently

5. you may get an error about video modes, hit enter then type 315 and hit enter to continue

6. follow prompts on screen untill you get into an x session and gparted loads up. shouldn take too long

7. once you are in gparted you should see the contents of the internal hard drive on your laptop. showing a full 100+gb(for hd users) ext2 linux partition sda1. you need to right click this partition and choose resize/move and reduce its size as you see fit (id reduce it to around 40-50gb - less if you plan to perform the special extra at the end of this howto (installing vista also), i have 4 partitions currently, my main linpus Part is 53.71gb, xXP partition is 29.29GB Vista one is 27.78GB and then i have the 1gb standard Swap Partition (not really needed but i havent needed to resizze it yet)

8. once you have entered the resize info hit ok then full screen the gparted window (middle button top right) to enable you to see the extra toolbar buttons, next right click on the unpartitioned space in the list below the graphic and select new, set the size of the partition you wish (it defaults to all available space) primary type and ntfs format then hit ok, feel fre to create another partition the same way if you plan on installing a triple boot vista system also. next hit the apply button on the toolbar and wait a short while while gparted does its thing,

9. After gparteds done close it and reboot your AAO let it boot into linpus just to check everything worked, it should show in file manager the reduced disk size. at this point i recommend loading up a terminal (alt-f2 and enter terminal) and then typing su and hitting enter, enter your root password then issue the command cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /home/user just to backup your grub conf just incase, as you will lose access to linpus temporarily next

10. next boot off your gparted live pen again and right click the partition you’ll be installing xp onto, (sda2 its probably called) and select manage flags, click boot ad then ok, full screen the window and check the apply option ais not lit, if it is click it, nd wait for it to finish.

NOTE: you cannot at this time boot linpus now as the system cant see it, this will be rectified shorty, you still need the gparted live files/pen hence my recommendation for 2 drives, if you only have one pen you will need to reformat the pen next if you use the pen trick below and then reformat/reinstall gparted later

11. next you need to either dig up a external dvd/cd drive or setup your usb pen to boot xp setup. personally id use an external cd drive (i used the hddvd drive from an xbox 360 for reference and it works fine - no i havent got a 360 just the hd drive, i use it on my media center for hddvd playback)

theirs instructions at http://www.liliputing.com/2008/04/insta ... e-usb.html for creating an xp bootable usb key. i used cds more because i installed XP Media center edition and it is two seperate cds so installing from a usb pen has habits of screwing up unless you know what your doing

12. once you have xp on a pen, or cd. boot your AAO from the usb device (pen/cd) and choose the partition listed in the setup sequence (should be the second one on the drive usually, first partition will be listed as unknown as its linux as will the last one (swap) depending if you created one or 2 partition you can easily choose the partition needed, format it with ntfs (quick) and follow the prompts as you proceed throguh xp setup it should continue as normal.

13. once xp is instaled feel free to do all windows updates etcetc as required

14. next you need to boot from gparted pen again (or reinstall it to pen as described above) and change the flags on sda1 to boot (hence removing the active tag from the xp partition, which will stop xp from working currently)

15. once youve applied those edits reboot and hopefulyl linpus should boot back up as if nothing has happened. once its booted go into a terminal (alt-f2 and type terminal then hit ok) and type su hit enter and enter your password then type vi /boot/grub/grub.conf and hit the ins key then edit it as follows,

change timeout to 10

remove the hiddenmenu line,

place a # in front of the splash line

add color=green/black below the splash line

add the following to the bottom of the file (below the linpus linux rcd section)

title Windows XP

rootnoverify (hd0,1)

chainloader +1

type those each on a new line but with no lines between them as this blog seems to suggest.

then hit the esc key then type : (colon) and pres w then enter then do : and q then enter to quit, then restart and you should get a boot menu, hit tab and you can then use the arrow keys to select the os to boot. if this doesnt work, or you were unable to boot back into linpus follow the steps belowtype mkdir /sda1

type mount /dev/sda1 /sda1 and hit enter then do cd /sda1

type mv dev dev.old then mkdir dev

type cp -Rvv /dev/* /sda1/dev and it should copy a load of junk over

then type chroot /sda1 and hit enter

next type grub-install /dev/sda

then type exit and then rm-rf dev

******Make sure you are in the sda1 folder*******

type mv dev.old dev

then type cd .. and then umount /dev/sda1

then reboot and hopefully you should be able to boot linpus to follow the instructions above about boot menu, any other issues leave a comment and ill reply to them personally.

——- End of XP & Linpus Dual Boot ——

Howto Linpus & XP & Vista Triple Boot.

im starting this tutorial assuming you already did the above procedure already

requirements are mostly the same,4gb pendrive required for vista usb pen install if you perform it that way (recommended)

1. boot into gparted again and set the 3rd(sda3) partition as boot - again this will cripple the bootloader for the moment)

2. next we need to make a bootable vista pen, instructions below, using your other computer uinsert the vista dvd and goto start > run and type cmd (im assuming other pc s running xp or vista) next find the drive letter of your cd drive and usb pen, format the pen as fat32 OR NTFS it doesnt matter (i installed from a 250gb ntfs formatted ext hd) then do the following in the command prompt window. (change D: to the drive letter of your cd drive containing vista dvd and x: to the drive letter of usb device)

D:

cd boot

bootsect /nt60 x:

this should respond saying partition updated or similar

next do these in command prompt

cd ..

xcopy /e/s/f *.* x:\

this command will take a while to complete so feel free to grab a coffee

once complete (said 614 files copied or something on the last line for me)

use the safely remove hardware icon down by the clock to safely remove the usb drive (has a habit of screwing up if you dont on this step) and plug it into your AAO then let AAO boot from it, it should be quite fast-if you get an error saying an unknown i/o error occured reboot - (CTRL+ALT+DELETE - DO NOT POWER OFF AAO AND POWER BACK ON) and try again, (my ext hd did that because it hadnt fully powered up when i told my AAO to boot from it, second tried loaded fine) you should then get into vista setup, quick notice about this, vista will only install (by default) on systems with more than 512mb ram, the standard AAO has 492 (gfx takes 16mb) so you need to tell vista to bypass its system checks to install, do this by doing the following.

proceed to the vista setup page by choosing language and then hitting next, on the ‘install now’ screen choose repare my computer in the bottom left corner, hit next at the os list and then click command prompt, then type the following command

setup.exe /nosyscheck

this will bypass the system checks,

NOTICE: id recommend only installing vista basc on a 512mb AAO as it wont be able to handle much more - my AAO runs Home Premium without too much trouble on 768mb (752) .

next proceed into the setup sequnce to hard drive selection , MAKE SURE you pick the correct partition to install to. click drive options and format once you have choosen the right partition (boot back into gparted and note down the partition size if you have to to get the right partition) once formatted select that partiton and hit next, usualyl you can tell if you have the right one because if you dont choose the ‘active(boot)’ partiton vista will throw an error saying windows cannotr find a suitable system partition or similar and will not proceed,

follow prompts as needed to install vista. feel free to install drivers etc and windows updtaes as needed (drivers available at http://www.aspireoneuser.com/downloads) then once your done boot back to gparted and again change the boot flag back to sda1. also note down the drive numebr of the swap partition while your their (probably sda4)

next reboot again and your boot menu should appear, boot linpus for the moment

once linpus has booted, bring up terminal again and follow the commands above to open grub.conf for editing, add the following below the windows xp lines.

title Windows Vista

rootnoverify (hd0,2)

chainloader +1

save and quit then type free -m

im almost promising that the swap line will contain all 0’s at the moment, since the swap partitons moved so needs reactivating.

to do this follow below

vi /etc/fstab

edit the last line (should have swap in the line somewhere) and change the /dev/sda2 at the start to /dev/sda4 (or whatever you wrote down from gparted) (remember pres ins first to enable edit mode then hit esc to exit edit and do :w hit enter then :q enter t quit, reboot your AAO and you should now have a working boot menu for all oses etc,

thats all their is to it

although this may look fairly complicated to do its actually not, i could do all these instalings in probably 3-5hours , vista took about 10mins to install from my usb drive (no edits to the os either) xp took around 40mins due to it being Media Center and needing me to swap cds a few times

hope this helps


--ok so it fitted in one post - SOrry admins for the stupid length

 

Thanks for the guide. I haven't used the guide yet, but as I understand it, it installs both OS in the internal drive. Wasn't the initial goal to install xp in an external drive? As a110 owner it's probably the only usable option.

I've made a bootable usb harddrive with xp installation files and started installation. But I run into the same problem you stated above with xp installation requiring a partition on the first disk.

 

yes the inital goal wasto boot from usb but since you cant disable the internal hd/ssd on the one it is incredibly difficult to do, i will look further into it though

 

I'm sorry but I don't seem to understand. If you hit F12 during the boot process you can boot to a USB drive with no problem. Doesn't that disable the internal HD/SSD? Or do you mean to bypass the SSD completely.

 

it has to be undetectable to xp or xp will try to install files to it and refuse to unstall to usb

 

Thanks!

The firewall on my work do url filtering, and I guess the word "radio" in your link got blocked.

Cheers!

 

lol, dmpwap.net/aspireone will get you same place,

 

Thank you again!