WinXP's setupp.ini controls how the CD acts. IE is it an OEM version or retail? First, find your setupp.ini file in the i386 directory on your WinXP CD. Open it up, it'll look something like this:
ExtraData=707A667567736F696F697911AE7E05
Pid=55034000
The Pid value is what we're interested in. What's there now looks like a standard default. There are special numbers that determine if it's a retail, oem, or volume license edition. First, we break down that number into two parts. The first five digits determines how the CD will behave, ie is it a retail cd that lets you clean install or upgrade, or an oem cd that only lets you perform a clean install? The last three digits determines what CD key it will accept. You are able to mix and match these values. For example you could make a WinXP cd that acted like a retail cd, yet accepted OEM keys. Now, for the actual values. Remember the first and last values are interchangable, but usually you'd keep them as a pair:
Retail = 51882 335
Volume License = 51883 270
OEM = 82503 OEM
So if you wanted a retail CD that took retail keys, the last line of your setupp.ini file would read:
Pid=51882335
And if you wanted a retail CD that took OEM keys, you'd use:
Pid=51882OEM
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Unlocking WinXP's setupp.ini
Friday, June 26, 2009
Install Windows XP from USB drive or memory card
If you are looking for a way to make your USB drive or memory card a Windows XP installer source you are at the right location. This is article is not about running the full version of Windows XP on flash drive or memory card as a destination. Also this should closely apply to any Netbook e.g. HP Mini 1000, Lenovo IdeaPad S10, Asus EEE PC, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Samsung NC10 just to name the most common ones.
A good move from HP with their Mini 1000 was providing Windows XP CD installer to allow people to easily reinstall the OS. Unfortunately most netbooks do not have a CD drive! On the other hand, most have a memory card reader (SD/SDHC for the HP Mini 1000) or USB ports enabling to connect a USB flash drive or external drive.
Preparing you USB drive or memory card with Windows XP installer
I think WinSetupFromUSB that you can download from here is the simplest way to do the job. If you find anything simpler, please let me know.
0. To work with the provided CD, you need a computer with a CD drive. If you do not, get an iso file and mount it with MagicDisc for example.
1. Install WinSetupFromUSB, the program should be started automatically
2. Click the Browse button on the Windows 2000/XP/2003 Source, select your CD and click OK
3. Underneath select your USB Device (Hit the Refresh button if it is not in the list)
4. Optional but highly recommended. Click the HP format tool button and format with the NTFS File system. Amazingly this made file transferts over 4x faster with the exact same memory card!! More about this topic here
5. Just click GO and wait for the procedure to complete. This takes a while, it took me around 30 minutes on my NTFS formatted card and over 2 hours on the card FAT formatted.
That was easy wasn’t it?
Huge Kudos to Ilko, Jaclaz and all the other guys on the MSFN forums and Boot land they are super helpful and nice.
Booting from a USB drive or memory card
If like me you have a HP Mini 1000 booting from either of them is very easy, the steps should be very similar for your netbook.
1. Insert the USB device or SD memory card you want to boot from
2. Restart your machine. At the screen showing the HP logo and the two lines of text “< F9 > Change Device Boot Order” and “< F10 > BIOS Setup Options” shown below”
3. Hold the F9 key until a device selection screen shows up
4. Select with the arrow keys and validate with Enter your selection and you are done
5. Just follow the steps on screen to install/reinstall Windows XP on your hard drive
Too much information is real noise
Just as a side comment during my experiments I have tried countless tedious tutorials, advices and not friendly softwares without any success including but not limited to FlashBoot, mkboot, uinetbootin, usb_prep8, and others before finding and trying WinSetupFromUSB. I literally wasted days because of that. This is typically the case of the internet again having the right information but being surrounded by noise making it very time consuming to find the right information and right solution.
This happens all the time, so I have two small contributions. This article which will hopefully increase your chances to find WinSetupFromUSB and also not linking to the non succesful one which will not help increasing their page rank and hopefully increase people chances to fall on WinSetupFromUSB during their research
Read More......
