It would be interesting to see if this script would run under freeDOS. I'm
pretty sure jaws for DOS runs under FreeDOS. It may be possible to put
together a bootable, talking CD to do a Windows install.
Last time I tried freeDOS was several years ago. It couldn't format an NTFS
drive. But given that linux can now do that, I'm guessing freeDOS can too.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Mustill-Rose"
Hey all,
I've been playing around with a new way of installing nt 6x operating systems (Vista, 2008 and 7) and I thought I'd post about it in the hope that someone might find it useful. Essentially, this is a script that excepts the path to a windows setup wim file along with a destination drive letter where you want the os installed. It then copies the setup files to the destination and once that drive is booted, the install starts streight away. I originally came across this method when I was reviving a netbook that required a 1.8 hard drive which I was not willing to purchase. The script allows you to install to a usb drive, so in this situation, after a bit of fiddling around in the bios, I was able to boot w7 from a usb drive and the netbook now functions as a local PHP server.
The main advantage from an accessibility point of view that I've found is that you no longer have to worry about setting the boot order in the bios. I know that not everyone on here enjoys taking things apart as much as I doo, but, if you had a laptop for example which just wasn't booting from cd, you could remove the harddrive, run this script, reinstall the drive and the install would start streight away. Unattended installs seem to work fine; I've just tested this out on a machine that required a vista reinstall and the setup got to the stage where I could press windows u without it prompting me.
I've put the script on dropbox; I don't claim any ownership to this - I found it a few months ago on one of the boot cd forums but I can't find the post again and the author isn't listed in the readme.
Instructions:
Download the zip at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5152598/installer.zip and extract it. Connect the destination hard drive to your working machine and take a note of its letter. Run the script; the first screen is an intro so press enter. You'll now see a dialog which lets you brows to an install.wim file. This will usually be located at x:\sources\install.wim, x being your optical drive. Note that if you have the wim file stored locally, the script will sometimes fail if the path is too long. Using the subst command to create a virtual drive seems to solve this issue. E.g. at a command prompt, type subst x: c:\longPath\sources\install.wim where x is the letter you want your virtual drive to have. Once you've given it the wim file, your presented with a list of the different versions of windows that the wim contains. Enter the number of the edition that you want and hit enter. The next few screens deel with drive letters. In every case, give the script the letter of the destination drive, regardless of what it tells you. When you are asked if x: is a usb hard drive, only say yes if you are planning to boot the os from usb - if you have the drive connected via a usb adaptor but you intend to connect it directly to the motherboard in another machine, say no. The script will format the destination drive if its not empty and will then begin the process, which seems to take between 10 to 15 minutes with a 7200RPM source drive and a 5400RPM destination. You get a press any key prompt once it's done, at which point you can remove the drive and install it into it's original machine.
It's not exactly a game changer, but as I said, hopefully someone will find it useful.
Cheers, Ben.
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