Last night, I received a netbook from my friend, he just bought it, and for the sake of cost saving he bought linux based netbook because he already have a valid license of WIndows XP which already purchased about year back on a computer fair. Since he is a marketing dude with lack of computer technical literacy so in the name of friendship I offered him to install XP on that Netbook. Unfortunately, I never bought a netbook before and never follow current hardware update so I didn’t know if this netbook would come without CD/DVD-Rom which was make it impossible to install Windows XP using CD on it. So, I tried to use another alternative, installing Windows XP using USB.

Prepare Windows XP Source
First thing we should do for this installation is preparing our Windows XP Source, we already have it on CD, but we would like to transfer it to USB and make the USB bootable as well, for this we need to copy XP source to our local hard drive (other hard drive on other PC/Laptop than Netbook’ HD I mean .. LOL)

Download and install USB_MultiBoot
USB_MultiBoot is a small tool that we can use to make a USB become bootable and can be used to install operating system from it. We can obtain this Multiboot batch from this location

Format USB
Run Multiboot batch and select format menu from main screen, we have option to format it using FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. I recommend you to format USB using NTFS format to gain better performance on XP installation

Make USB bootable
Next step are to make USB bootable and load necessary Windows XP Installation into USB stick. For this, use following sequence from Multiboot main menu:

1. Give XP Setup Source Folder and give UserData for XP Setup, to select location of XP Installation source we have copied in our local hard drive

2. Give USB-Driver target, to select which USB we will use as bootable USB

3. Make bootable USB-Drive with XP Setup Folder, to start make bootable USB process

Change BIOS setting
Next thing to do is to change BIOS setup, because we will use USB as bootable then we need to change order booting sequence by placing USB on higher lever. Normally it should be under “Boot” section.

Start installation
OK we done with all perquisites, plug our USB stick and re-boot our netbook,  system then should ask for alternative boot option, select first option, 1. Begin TXT Mode Setup Windows XP and system will start for Windows XP Installation, other steps then will be same as if we installing XP from CD/DVD.

For further step-by-step on how to installing Windows XP using USB you can go to this link: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=4900

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