Thanks! My goal, my main ideal is no Optical media, only flash drives.
mINDsELFiNDULGE wrote:I have a laptop with no CD player and this saved me. You rock! Swapping harddrives to another laptop, installing xp, and disabling certain drivers and then swapping harddrives back was just NOT working (anyone know a good way of doing that?? I seemed so close, yet so far)
Nah, only thing you could do is either make a Sysprep (search the forum for the term) or install on the other machine only so far as to the first reboot (where it has copied all the files from the CD, yet not installed any non-generic drivers), then shut it down and swap HDDs.
That may work if the HAL is identical (was it also a laptop?)
I was looking into Sysprepping, but it looked like more work than I had time for at the time to be sure I got all the variables right.
After the first reboot? Sounds like something to try.
Is the HAL, CPU, and BIOS causing this problem for me? It was from a CDless mini old HP lappy, and I was doing a generic install on a Dell 600m. I also have a super old Sony (Win98) with a like 8 inch screen and built in webcam, that I'll be trying this on (no CD).
Is there perhaps a registry entry I can sabotage so all devices get reinstalled on a reboot? I heard Win9* had that possibility. Some device index entry?
Next, can I format a USB Flash Drive to appear as a USB DVD bootable drive? Then I can place this on it and simply add DPacks as needed (and other tools) (well, not quite, but this relates to this).
Yeah, that works, if the BIOS supports it.
I think the wiki for the EEE PC has a guide to this, google for it.
You could also buy a IDE/SATA to USB adaptor and connect a generic ODD to it.
Things cost like $15 maybe.
The eee PC flash guide was actually what I was using. 
But I'm not sure this counts as a bootable CD drive? I think there are BIOSes that support a USB CD player as bootable, but not necessarily a USB Flash? Am I wrong?
I know there are side USB Floppy drives too, but I wasn't aware that the BIOS boot order needs to support a "USB Device" to use those side floppies. My ideal is to never need a CD/DVD/Floppy again and only ever use flash/thumb drives.
Oh, and a slight side question. Is there a way for XP's driver search installer to search sub folders? (like Vista does) Is there a reg edit to the path folders I can do? Wildcards? Maybe a simple program?
XP does search all folders for drivers if they are on an optical medium, but not if they are on a HDD.
KTD will index the DP drive folders so that XP will search them all recursively.
You could put them onto an ISO and mount with DeamonTools if you still want to keep in on a HDD...
I was hoping there was a way to fool the driver installer into thinking it's always searching "removable media"? Ideally a reg file that would turn this on, and a second one that would turn this off.
KTD?
I know about the iso method, but I guess I just want to just have a way to drop files into a folder structure with no recompressing by me (ISO) or ever using a disc again, or installing any installer needed programs.
In the end, and I know I'll probably not get it, but my ideal is a flash drive (FOREVER banishing CDs/DVDs), with several OSes on a boot menu (All Vistas and XPs), that can be booted from a BIOS that only has the option as booting from limited sources. If needed I'd just go with several small flash drives (they're cheap enough now to consider this IMO, no more need to burn CDs/DVDs) for each flavor.
BTW, 1 more suggestion for the program. A 1 button press that would autoselect all packs, unpack them, and autoinstall them.