XP from USB pen drive - madness & hair loss, help!

I have got the 120 gb hard drive Acer Aspire One with 512 mb RAM ZG5 model. I have an iso of TinyXP and three USB pen drives, 1gb, 2gb and 4 gb. THe 4 gb one is a U3 device. I have tried making a bootable XP pen drive with various methods but come up with one problem or another.

My Aspire One will not boot from a CD in an external drive, and wouldn't do this for TinyXP or Ubuntu, though the external drive works once the operating system's loaded. And yes, I did all the F12 and select business.

When I used the U3 method my vista laptop tried ot tell me I had two of these connected. When I used the any-USB drive method the software specified said that the CD TinyXP was on wasn't the XP files.

It must be easier than this? And what do people who buy the XP version of the Aspire One do when they have to reinstall Windows? Do they do it from a CD, and if so, how when I can't boot from a CD?

I've put Ubuntu back on for now but I have reasons for preferring XP on this machine. I have all the drivers ready.

If I can make an Ubuntu-loaded USB stick in an automated way as I did a few minutes back, why the long-winded method for XP. Any psychotherapy... I mean solutions... welcome.

Thanks.

 

Hi

I followed the method detailed on the following video on Youtube,


As the guy in the Vid says you can use a 1GB USB stick.

Best wishes

 

Thanks. However, that video uses some methods that have already failed for me.

I hope someone comes up with a sane and simple way to do this task, it should be a doddle.

 

I have also tried, and thought it would be easy, but in the end, only this tutorial worked like a charm for me:

http://www.jcmiras.net/surge/p96.htm


Good luck.

 

Amazing, was it as far back as July that I initially gave up on this - well, since Thursday just gone I now have XP installed from a 1 gb stick, using the link in the last post. Weirdly the software for preparing the stick wouldn't work with my almost new Toshiba laptop but did work with a 1999 Fujitsu tower. I think my year of Linux may be an experiment finished with until Microsoft no longer sends updates for XP, by which time hopefully Shuttleworth and co will have sorted Ubuntu out. :-\

Just posting this to underscore the need for perseverence and experimentation for any googling this problem, having tried four different drives.

 

^
I've tried this method using peToUSB on a Windows 7 machine, but it doesn't recognise that I have a USB stick attached, saying "No USB Sticks Found!"

I don't think this works with Windows 7?

 

It seems temperamental about which sticks it will co-operate with. I've tried four and only one worked, a cheap Maxell.

 

Hi,

I've been trying to install XP into my AAO (8GB version) and the installation stops just after the GUI installation starts. It gives me an error and after is shows a log about it (can't understand what it says ). When the computer boots, I get a hall.dll error. Any ideas how I could get this working?

I tried to do this with WinSetupFromUSB and usb_prep8/bootect. Both stops at the same time.

EDIT:
The Error that I get in the GUI installation is:

Code:

Fatal Error
An error has been encountered that prevents Setup from countinuing.

One of the components that Windows needs to continue setup could not be installed. 

Manifest Parse Error : An Invalid character was found in text content.

Press OK to view the Setup log file.

After I close the log, it boots and the I get the hall.dll error (if I remember correctly, this hall.dll error don't get if I select from boot menu the USB).

SECOND EDIT:

I tried Ron's TinyXp image for Aspire One and that finally worked! My post is SOLVED :mrgreen: