Hello!

I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate (OEM).

I was just wondering if there's any way for me to create a bootable CD/DVD of Windows XP and not have to reinstall XP. I'm happy with my Vista, and don't want to have format and reinstall OS's.

Why do I need this? Because one of my DVD burners has a firmware upgrade but in order to upgrade the firmware I HAVE to have Windows XP on my system (which I don't). I've been experiencing problems with DL DVD's on this drive, so I think the firmware upgrade that's currently available on XP will help resolve this.

I'm NOT going to change OS's back to XP just to flash the firmware, however....I would like to upgrade the firmware, and the firmware upgrade is only available on an XP platform.

The DVD Writer in question is my HP DVD Writer 640b ATA Device.

Any thoughts?

YES you can, YES it will suck, NO you cant access your vista partition.

Here is why...

Vista was designed to be used with a brand new format of NTFS. The os its self is backward compatible with fat/32, xp ntfs and of corse vista ntfs. So to do the CD version of what you want to do you would need to shrink your vista partition using the Disk Manager MMC snap in and partition a Fat32 or XP NTFS partition large enough to hold the files that you need to store (plus you need this partition for virtual memory if you are doing any thing intensive)
then just set your bios to boot from cd before the harddrive...

Now here is my suggestion... shrink the vista partition by atleast 2gigs format it xp ntfs and install windows in a dual boot configureation.

now if for some reason you dont get a dual boot menu well then your in trouble... cause boot.ini does not exist any more... (as far as I can find)

Hope this all helps

Omni
MCP, MCDST, Network+

i should also mention that xp does have a tendancy to blow out vista... (it did on my laptop...) so you may have to install xp (which can kill vista) and then reinstall vista (oem software may not let you save the previous xp partition so you may have to get creative...

Omni
MCP, MCDST, Network+

AFAIK there is no way to run XP as a live CD or DVD, maybe a question for the XP Techies !

Dual Booting or Virtual PC http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pr... is the way to go.

oooooo VPC most excelent... never even thought of that... since the poster is runing ultimate he can infact get vpc FOR FREE from microsoft...

Omni
MCP, MCDST, Network+

Crap.

The last thing I wanted to do is to muck around with the partition and/or my OS, because ultimately (I'm quite sure of this) SOMETHING would get corrupted and then I'd have to reinstall from scratch, which is a real pain in my a*s.

Are you absolutely positive that there's no way to create a bootable CD/DVD? All I need to accomplish is to be able to boot in XP and launch a small file that'll flash the firmware.

I KNOW I can boot off my external USB drive (which is empty --- 300 GB). I've tried rebooting with my XP CD in hopes that I could install XP to my external but it gave me an error message. Something to the effect of not having access to the drive, and that it didn't necessarily mean there was a physical problem with the drive.

For some reason I'm unable to run the XP CD from my Vista desktop (to install to my external drive).

Perhaps theres a way to copy the necessary files to my external drive manually????

This is the gist of bootable flash drives:

https://www.codidirect.com/shop/thefactsbehindbootability.htm

Forget doing what you are trying to do. Key words quoted from the link provided by brighteyes above:

XP does not support the creation of a bootable disk that will run XP (M$ designed it that way to keep money flowing into Redmond)

The last thing I wanted to do is to muck around with the partition and/or my OS, because ultimately (I'm quite sure of this) SOMETHING would get corrupted and then I'd have to reinstall from scratch, which is a real pain in my a*s.

In that case, don't muck around.

i_XpUser

Yes,

Indeed.

I assume this is your HP DL drive.

Granted that you got the Sony drive to recognize the your media after a firmware update in Vista, same thing is not automatically guaranteed with the HP DL drive or more accurately the (Hitachi-LG) GWA 4162b drive.

While all this went on, did you even try another media besides the Playo to further understand the issue - that could be part of the issue you know. Also, if your drive was a 16X why specifically order cheap media that are for 2.4x-8x drives - huh? If you can avoid the more obvious pitfalls, there is very little incentive to want to do the opposite.

Avoiding a problem might not seem challenging, but in many cases it will save you the frustration and gobs of time wasted on fixing what shouldn't have happened in the first place - think about it ;-)

http://www.computing.net/windowsvis...

As far as the firmware/XP issue goes - did you try to run the firmware in XP SP2 compatibility mode & also as administrator. I assume the firmware you are trying is the 3MB "SP26639.exe" from HP right? Oh & BTW, check your PM inbox.

Can you not update the firmware from a WinDOS Boot Floppy ?

What about running virtual desktop then instal XP to this.

--------------------
Many Thanks
REIDY

http://lifehacker.com/software/wind...

i_XpUser

I remember this tech i worked with who had a xp bootable cd-r and he to have 1.5 gigs on a free fat32 partition on the computer he was using and it would work...

said he buaght it off the internet... but hell who knows might have been a dressed up linux system... that was like 4 years ago...

Omni
MCP, MCDST, Network+

Bart's PE is a "bootable live windows CD/DVD"

(doesn't need to be 'baught' either)

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real.

One other way is to get hold of a second hand hard drive (anything bigger than 2 gb will do).

Disconnect your vista main drive. connect your second hand disk, install XP and do what you want with it.

Once you are done, remove the xp hard drive and reconnect your vista hdd.

___________________________________________
☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

Look this over:

http://virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox

Do you know anyone with XP that will let you borrow their computer for a few hours?

instead of transferring the software to update the DVD burner, why not transfer the DVD burner? After all, it's the one that needs updating.

If its USB you could even pull it off on a computer-lab or library computer, and if its internal... thats an extra 5 minutes worth of hardware work.

-M@