Installing Win XP without a floppy disk drive

F

fangface

Adept
Hi everyone,

Im building a new PC and will be installing Windows XP on it as my primary OS.
Im not planning on buying a floppy drive with the PC, will i have issues with:

1. Detecting a SATA harddisk with my Windows XP CD at installation
2. RAID Drivers- Im going to buy a P35 chipset based m/b

Bottom line- can i manage without a floppy drive, and if yes- what do i need to do?

Thank you very much in advance! :)
 
Yep, you can manage w/o a Floppy drive like I am doing for last 3 years (ever since my old Floppy drive died, I didn't buy a new one)
Just be sure to always keep a working bootable CD/DVD and a CD/DVD Drive. download Ultimate Boot CD and write it to CD.
If your MoBo supports USB booting (most of the latest MoBos support this) then just keep a 256MB bootable pen drive.
 
yes u can manage... some of the older motherboards need a floppy if u want to update the BIOS but as said above the new Motherboards support USB updates so it should not be a prob :)
 
Installation on RAID and some SATAs will require a floppy. XP does not support USB drives for SCSI/RAID drivers by F6 method. You can integrate the RAID/SATA drivers into ur XP installation CD using nLite or some other such software.
 
Naga said:
Installation on RAID and some SATAs will require a floppy. XP does not support USB drives for SCSI/RAID drivers by F6 method. You can integrate the RAID/SATA drivers into ur XP installation CD using nLite or some other such software.
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Thanks, I finally did not have any issues with installing XP :) , it did not require any RAID or SATA drivers to continue.
 
I dint buy a Flopy drive with my 3 year old old P4 rig/915GAV nor with my new E6750/650i system . I have never felt its absence in the past 3 years.
 
rebel_guru said:
I dint buy a Flopy drive with my 3 year old old P4 rig/915GAV nor with my new E6750/650i system . I have never felt its absence in the past 3 years.
Click to expand...
Depends on your config and setup, I guess. My board requires RAID drivers for XP installation on RAID volumes (as will most boards). Only way 2 add them is either by floppy or integration on installation media.
 
you do not need a floppy in particular to install these things..there are various boot up cds available for the purpose and they serve the same purpose...

HIRENS boot CD is one example its free..google it for latest release

download it

and there you go
 
I don't have a floppy for ages now. If I need sata drivers I nlite it into XP and then do setup. That's probably the only way if you have to load sata drivers and don't have floppy.
 
If you absolutely need to use a floppy, just burn a floppy image to a cd using floppy emulation. Nero will do it for you, there is a virtual floppy program called... Surprise Surprise..!! Virtual Floppy, which you can find here

It's really easy to use. If you need to update BIOS or something, just load BIOS floppy image to Virtual floppy, and save as correct format image file for CD floppy emulation. Start Nero (or other burning software) and select to make a bootable CD. Use/select the image you created for the boot image... and it should work for BIOS update or anything else you need a floppy boot for.
 
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