Installing Windows XP from Hard Drive

[hendrix]

Hello All! I'm in the midst of the planning process for installing windows XP from the Hard Drive I want to ultimately run the OS from, and I would like to offer the following questions to you experts ...

In order to enable a boot to the hard drive I should format the drive in FAT32 rather than NTFS and then install the i386directory right? Am I missing any steps?

Will the format process in the windows XP setup process overight the installation files causing a scene similar to a snake eating its tail? (If so I think I'd like to try it anyway just to see it happen).

What's my best bet for a boot disk that will allow me to access the C: drive on startup? Windows 98 Boot disk? Custom Boot disk?

Your advice is much appreciated, I'm still attempting to work around silly errors induced by microsoft's uber-sensitive setup process. If you are interested in the reason I'm installing from my hard drive, see my previous post about installing windows XP, but in a nutshell its because my previous install attempts stop in a "hang" during "setup is loading winduws" during the text only stage of the setup.

[Geekgirl]

[hendrix]

Hi GeekGirl, thanks for the response. I became discouraged with my CD-Swap out plan when I pulled one from a friend's dell machine and came to realize it was an LG drive, and also a cd-rw combo drive. Needless to say I got the same result. I'm still looking for a classic CD-Drive, so I'll keep you posted.