China DOS Union

My notebook has no optical drive or floppy drive, and can only boot via USB with a USB flash drive. But the machine only recognizes HDD mode, and after booting, the prompt is at c:/>. I run the backed-up XP installation program on the hard drive, but the program always installs in c: (that is, installs on the USB flash drive). Is there any way to install the system to drive D? (My original drive c was drive D after booting.)

I used winnt -r to select the installation directory, but it still doesn't work, and it still installs in c by default.

Thanks to the experts for help, thank you :-)

Even if you install it on D: and then boot after unplugging the USB drive, it may not work because the system needs to boot from the D: drive. Try using Usboot to format the USB drive to USB zip mode.

Thank you for your reply. I formatted the USB flash drive to ZIP mode, but the system doesn't recognize it and it can't boot. In my CMOS boot menu, there is only one option: USB Hard Drive z.

Now I'm thinking, should I use the USB flash drive to boot and then make drive D (my original C drive) bootable? Then unplug the USB flash drive and boot the computer from the system drive. I don't know how to make drive D a bootable hard drive. Please give me some advice! Thanks.

Use the `sys` command to transfer system files to the C partition of the hard disk, then activate the C partition, and next time it can be booted directly from the hard disk.

I used sys d: (after booting with a USB drive, the system C drive becomes D), and then activated the D drive. Then I unplugged the USB drive and booted from the hard drive, but it still prompted: no operating system... ..., did I make a mistake somewhere? Thanks

After booting from the USB flash drive, try Format d:/s. Then remove the USB flash drive and boot from the hard disk.

Originally posted by chujiafu at 2006-1-15 18:21:
After booting with the USB flash drive, try Format d:/s. Then unplug the USB flash drive and boot from the hard drive.

Hello, I did this, but it still doesn't work.
I think maybe I should activate drive D under fdisk, but when I use the fdisk command, it prompts that it can only activate the current drive (that is, the USB flash drive), and cannot activate D in the second drive. I'm almost going crazy.
Is there any other way? Very anxious, thank you thank you!

Is your D: drive a primary partition? If not, use software like Pqmagic to convert it to a primary partition before operating.

Thanks a lot, it's already okay.

Try using the FDD mode of USBOOT.