Boot old machine from network or usb

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Theodor
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Boot old machine from network or usb

Unread post by Theodor »

An old machine for conduct browser testing. I wanted to install winxp. usually i boot and install from network directly, if no builtin network card, install discrete network and boot from usb flash. But.. one particular board failed to boot from usb what to do? i had neglect cds away long ago and forgotten, have to dig up my place to find cds... i still hope to boot from usb may be this is about grub2 and bootmgr. i looking how to do usb bootable with win98 or winxp.

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K4sum1
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Re: Boot old machine from network or usb

Unread post by K4sum1 »

If the laptop still has an OS, you could use something like YUMI to burn the installer to a drive partition, then install off of the HDD
R3n who?

Compa

Re: Boot old machine from network or usb

Unread post by Compa »

I wonder if the USB device would boot providing it's in floppy drive mode (if that's even possible). I assume Feodor2 is testing his non-SSE builds of Mypal, quite a lot of computers back then would have required a boot floppy - which is why XP still comes with one, since most people would have presumably been upgrading from older OSes.

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Theodor
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Boot old machine from network or usb

Unread post by Theodor »

Yes i want to conduct testing on several machines, i assembled them from scratch so no OS, i cant boot pentium3 on intel 815 board, and pentium4 on intel 845 board. Seems properly recognized usb drive, but grub2 and bootmgr failed to boot... Ah floopy, though, i have floppy drives in good condition, but no any working floppy diskette around.

Compa

Boot old machine from network or usb

Unread post by Compa »

Mind giving the error output of grub2 if possible? Wonder if it's a hardware defect or some obscure BIOS setting that requires enabling, given how old these boards are (circa 2001).

On a note, something that's not very well known: Windows ME is also bootable from a USB, albeit only the OEM disc can do this without needing to mess with the ISO manually (available from old-dos.ru if needed)

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