Member Avatar for Aeonix

Is there a way to prepare 80GB HDD (SATA) in such way, that it boots from ISO on itself?

I'm delivering this to an old grandpa who doesn't know a lot about software (he's electrical genius though). I will create steps on how to get through installation. But I need to get this HDD to him (it's too late to buy CD/DVD and I have only my own USB).

I want him to start computer, put this HDD in, restart computer, get through installation and use ye oldie Windows XP x86. How do I do that? :)

I will leave empty partition for the ISO and another one enough to install Windows XP on it. Doable?

PS: He's running pretty old hardware, PC was a top-notch hardware 11 years ago. Including GeForce 6600, 4GB of RAM, Celeron 2.66GHz. It did run Linux Ubuntu Live-CD (from USB) last time I was there though.

Edited by Aeonix
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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I'd seen that kicked around for years but the only bootable image was one you made to work with the Hyper-V hypervisor.
Example: https://www.google.com/#q=bootable+xp+via+hypervisor

So my answer is no booting from ISO because there is no boot manager made to do that. I think someone could tackle such a project but I don't get why we'd do that.

I see further troubles as while this would install the XP OS, what about all the post OS install driver and app work?

Member Avatar for Itsdigger

I have never heard of booting XP without a boot disc but I know folks have made a bootable usb flash drive and just leave it in the usb port .
I can't imagine why someone would still want to use XP as it's no longer supported and hard to find drivers .
It's wide open to trojans and viruses.
Personally I would keep running a linux of your choice. Maybe put it on a flash drive and save the HDD for storage .

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