China DOS Union

My hard drive is currently split into 5 partitions, all in NTFS format. One of my partitions has an XP backup on it (the entire i386 directory was copied there). I don't have a CD-ROM drive or floppy drive, only a bootable USB flash drive. How should I make a boot disk so I can format the C drive and then reinstall XP from the backup partition?

First, boot into the “Command Prompt” program in the XP boot menu. You will see a DOS-like window, and you can format the system partition there. Before installation, you need to run Smartdrv.exe. The Smartdrv.exe file can simulate part of the memory as a disk buffer to speed up file access, so when installing Windows XP under DOS, running Smartdrv.exe first can greatly increase file copy speed. One thing that needs to be explained is that this program uses extended memory, so Himem.sys must also be loaded beforehand when running it. How do you do that? First, use “Add/Remove Programs” in the Windows 98 Control Panel to create a boot disk. Then search for “Himem.sys” on drive C and copy it to the boot disk. Create a new text file on the boot disk and add this line: device=himem.sys, save it and rename the file to Config.sys. Then find the Smartdrv.exe file in the Windows 98 installation directory and copy it to the boot disk as well. Next, boot the computer with this boot disk, and at the prompt enter “Smartdrv C+20480”, then press Enter (note: the parameter “C+” means assigning the virtual buffer to hard drive C. You can set the Windows XP installation location according to your own needs. “20480” indicates the size of the virtual buffer, in KB, generally about 1/3 of physical memory). Now you can install it. Put the Windows XP installation CD into the CD-ROM drive. Here, if the CD-ROM drive letter is F, then switch to the I386 directory on drive F, enter “Winnt” and press Enter, and the journey of installing Windows XP begins!

Really detailed, thanks. I'll go give it a try.