Installing Wondows XP from hard drive
 

I've done this once before so I know it's possible. Basically, I need to put all of my windows XP files on my hard drive and somehow get my hard drive to boot and begin installing to itself. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

NOTE: I don't want to hear that it's not possible, or that it would be easier to... I know what needs to be done I just don't know how to do it. If you don't know how, then please don't try to tell me to do it otherwise. Thank you.

Make a bootable partition and put your cd contents on it (the i386 directory, for sure). Get the boot.ini right. I don't remember for sure, after the stuff is on there, you might need to boot from floppy or cd, then run the setup program on the hard drive. You might find more detailed instructions if you scrouge around looking for "unattended install" stuff. Best I can do with a dilapidated memory.

1) Install DOS (FreeDOS is recommended, since it can run on a FAT32 partition)
2) Copy \i386 from the Windows CD to the hard drive.
3) cd i386 and run winnt.exe

Does DOS have ot be installed or can I just use a boot disk. Because I've been using Hiren's boot disk and I'm beginning to think that's where my problem is coming from. I guess that's the next thing I'll try, then.

Is the only folder that needs to be installed the i386 folder or do I need OEM as well?

is XP damaged and you cant boot? why cant you do a normal install? here is a way to install XP and to save your files. you will need to burn two CD's or use USB flash drives.

get gparted
++resize your prexisting partion to make remove for a new partion
++creat a FAT32 partion size depends on how much you want to backup

get knoppix
++boot from knoppix
++mount your XP and FAT32 "drives"
++copy every thing you need from XP to FAT32 "drive"

boot gparted
++format XP partion to NTFS

boot XP
++install XP on NTFS partion
++copy files from FAT32 partion over to NTFS partion

boot gparted
++delete FAT32 partion
++resize ntfs partion entire drive size

If you're trying to use the Recovery Console disk from another OEM system, you're probably going to run into "EULA not found" stuff. Generally speaking, that is embedded in the BIOS.

This laptop has been a problem in the past. It pretty much installs bad whenever it's done from CD. Why I can't say. But I don't need to save anything and I want to do a clean install.

free-dos can be booted from a floppy....

I know that, but does dos have to be installed on the hard drive in order for the installation from the hard drive to work?

As long as you can access the install files on your hard drive it'll work.