The SP1 XP Bootable dilemma revisted!

[adrenalincreek]

Sorry to bring up the issue of how to make an XP bootable CD once again, but I definitely need help. I spent the whole labor day weekend trying to make one. I carefully followed the steps at: http://old.bink.nu/xpbootcd/ but failed.

The IBM thinkpads don't ship with an XP CD to start with. So my starting point is not copying all the files from the XP CD as described on that page. My starting point is the I386 folder on my Thinkpad's hard drive. But this, theoretically, should not make any difference as many people in this forum mentioned that all what's needed is only the I386 folder.

I was thinking... another source of error could be the two XP Bootsector (*.bin) files we download from the link above. (They're both 2KB in size, does this make any sense).

The CD I end up creating every time is a non-bootable CD though I followed the steps carefully. I'm totally frustrated now after trying and burning seven CDs. Can anybody shed some light? Do you think there is something wrong with the Easy CD Creator settings listed at the link above?

I would greatly appreciate your help.

Yours,
Adrenalin

[Stingray72]

Try this web site for a change http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=295

instead of copy the whole cd as mentioned on the website, copy the i386, valueadd and support folders and slip steam sp2 to it. it worked for me

[adrenalincreek]

I will give it a try. Thanks very much stingray!

[adrenalincreek]

Many thanks!

The XP bootable CD didn't work for me. But I used an MS-DOS boot CD, then put in the CD that has all the folders I copied from the my ThinkPad hard drive before I format (i.e. /i386 /IBMtools ,...etc) and ran winnt from the /i386 folder. This finally got WinXP installed!

I'm thinking now of upgrading to SP2 before installing any software, but I have two concerns:

1) When I run the ThinkPad configuration tool from the control panel, I see the buttons on the sides of all the drives except the one in the lower right corner. It doesn’t say what that button is used for, instead, it has the text: "Drive not installed" Could someone check and tell me if they have the same thing? Did I miss a drive or something? I can't remember what that button was used for before I format!
The hardware drives under Control Panel -> System ->Device drives doesn’t show that any drives are missing.

2) The wireless networking light at the bottom of the LCD is not as solid green as it used to before I format. It keeps blinking and the transmit/receive rate is generally slower. I remember someone in this forum mentioned that they had problems with the latest 802.11 drive, and that it got fixed when they reverted back to the old drive. Did anybody experience this before? I got the latest drive using the software installer. The previous drive was the one that initially came installed on the machine.

Thanks very much!