How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup Disk on a

Preinstalled / Preloaded Windows System

If you have bought an off-the-shelf computer recently, chances are that it came with Windows
preloaded onto the system. Unfortunately, many of these systems with Windows preinstalled do
not come with a Windows setup CDROM; at best they include a Recovery Disk that restores the
system to its shipping condition. If you plan to reformat and do a clean installation of your
system, you might think that you have to buy another additional Windows XP licence even
though you have already paid for one for that same machine. This article shows you how you
can re-create a usable and bootable Windows XP installation CD using your running system.

Why Create a Bootable Windows Setup CD?

There are at least a few reasons why you might need a bootable Windows Setup disc:

1. Very often, people want to reinstall a system to remove the crap that comes preinstalled
on their system. If you have bought any PC or laptop from brands like Dell, Acer, HP, etc,
you will know what I mean. The manufacturer typically installs tons of demo and trial
software, toolbars and other junk that clutter up your system and slow it down.
Uninstalling these programs takes a lot of time, and even when it is done, there are still
residual pieces of the previous installation littered across your hard disk and the registry.
In such a situation, it is useful to reinstall a pristine copy of Windows, load the drivers and
only the software you actually want to use.

2. Another possible reason is that you've used your system for some time, and it's become
incredibly sluggish and cluttered. You want to reinstall and start from scratch. To simplify
the process, you want to integrate (slipstream) all the Windows hotfixes, device drivers,
applications, etc, into your Windows install disk, so that when you finish running the
Windows installer, your system is good to go, without the need to wait a few hours for
Windows Update to catch up with the last few years' worth of Windows Update. For this
slipstreaming to take place, you need a Windows setup CD.

3. If you want to do a repair install of Windows, you will need a bootable Windows install
disc.

I'm sure there are many other possible reasons why you might need a Windows Installation CD,
but let's get on with the procedure for making one.

Prerequisites

Before you can recreate a bootable Windows installation disk, certain things are required:
1. A Windows XP System

This guide only applies to Windows XP systems, be it XP Home or Professional. I have

not tested this procedure on other versions of Windows.

2. An I386 Directory (Folder) on your Hard Disk

This is essential. Without this, the procedure outlined on this page will not work. To find
out whether you can use the steps listed on this page to re-create your bootable
Windows XP setup disk, look for into your system drive (usually the C: drive), and see if
you can find a folder named I386 in the root directory. That is, see if you have the C:\I386
folder on your hard disk.

If your PC or laptop came from the major PC vendors like HP, Dell or Acer, chances are
that there is an I386 folder at the root of drive C:, unless you've deleted it.

Note that only c:\i386 contains the files needed for this operation. Do not use the files in
"C:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386" or any other folders.

3. Windows License Key

When you bought your PC or laptop, it probably already came with Windows pre-
activated, which means that you could use the computer out-of-the-box without having to
enter your Windows licence key from Microsoft or needing to activate the machine.

However, when you reinstall Windows, you will need a Windows licence key. You can
usually find this taped somewhere on your computer (sometimes on the underside or
back of the computer). Without this, you won't get far in the installation.

4. Device Drivers

Some manufacturers provide you with the device drivers for your system on a CD that
comes with your system. Others require you to go to their website and download these
drivers. Whichever the case may be, make sure you have all your drivers handy before
you start. Burn them onto a CD or DVD. Do not leave them on your hard disk, since your
clean installation of Windows will probably wipe out everything on your hard disk. If your
computer has SATA, IDE, SCSI or other mass storage devices (for your hard disks) that
the Windows installer does not recognize out of the box, you will need to create a floppy
disk with the drivers for that device. At the appropriate time, when Windows prompts you
to hit F6 to load the drivers from a floppy disk, you will need to so. This is however
outside the scope of this tutorial.
 If your manufacturer has not provided you with any device drivers, or if you have lost the
drivers CD or DVD that the vendor has provided you, all is not lost. You can try using a
device driver backup program to extract the existing drivers on your currently running
system. Burn the drivers onto a CD or DVD before starting. You can get a device driver
backup program from the Free Device Driver Backup and Extraction Utilities page on
thefreecountry.com. Note that backing up your device drivers in this manner will not help
you if your computer has SATA, IDE, SCSI or other mass storage devices (for your hard
disk) that Windows setup does not recognise. In such cases, you need the
manufacturers' textmode drivers which the driver backup utility will not recreate.

Another alternative is to use a commercial software like Driver Detective to track down
and get the latest versions of all the device drivers for your system.

5. CD/DVD Burning Software

You will need to have a CD/DVD burning software that will allow you to create Bootable
CDs. Not all DVD or CD mastering programs allow you to do this, especially the OEM
versions that are bundled with new computers or DVD/CD writers.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will use ImgBurn, a free burning software that you can
find listed on the Free CD and DVD Burners and Copying Software page. You can of
course use other software, but since it is difficult for me to write a tutorial that covers
every possible burning software around, this guide will assume that you are using
ImgBurn. Since the software is available free of charge, I doubt that this choice will pose
significant hardship for anyone.

6. Windows Setup CD Boot Sector

You will also need the boot sector of an existing bootable Windows 2000, XP or 2003
setup CDROM. The easiest way to get this is to download the file wxp10.zip from one of
the links on http://www.nu2.nu/download.php?sFile=wxp10.zip. In fact, you should do this
now. Download the file and save it on your desktop. You will need the file later.

I would also strongly suggest that you make a backup image of your entire system before you
reinstall it. By entire system, I mean the whole system and not just your data. This is important in
case there is some glitch in your installation or some fault in the setup CD that you create,
resulting in an unusable system. In such a situation, you will be able to restore your working
system from your backup image. (If you are not sure what a backup image is, or think that I'm
only talking about saving your documents to another location, or worse, think that "image" refers
to some sort of picture, please do not carry on with this procedure.)
If you don't have a decent hard disk backup and image software, you can check out the Free
Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities page. If you are tinkering
with your system, you owe it to yourself (and your sanity) to get a good hard disk image (backup)
program.

Important Note

Note that there are NO GUARANTEES with the procedure I outline here. It is possible that it
does not work - for example, if your vendor has deleted some essential file in the I386 folder
(which we will need), your installation may well fail at some crucial point after it has formatted
your hard disk! It is also possible that my procedure will not work on your system, or that I made
some mistake in describing it here. So do it all at your own risk. And make sure you have an
up-to-date backup of your system that you know works.

Steps to Creating a Bootable Windows Setup Disk from the I386

Directory/Folder

1. Create a temporary working folder at the root (top) of the C: drive called "XPSETUP"
(without the quotes). Actually, you can name it anything you want and put it anywhere
you like, but for ease of explanation, the remainder of the steps below will assume that
you have created the XPSETUP folder in the root of drive C:. This C:\XPSETUP folder
will be where you will create the CDROM directory structure for your bootable Windows
CD.
2. Copy the entire C:\I386 to C:\XPSETUP. When you have finished, you will have
C:\XPSETUP\I386. Notice that I said "copy", not "move". Do NOT drag and drop the I386
folder into the XPSETUP directory. If you do so, you may end up moving it into the
XPSETUP folder (depending on where you created the XPSETUP folder). It is important
to work from a copy of the I386 directory so that if you make mistakes, you can simply go
back and start all over again. If you move the directory or drag and drop it, and you make
a mistake, your mistake will be permanent. So once again, COPY the entire I386 folder
to XPSETUP. It may take a while for the copy operation to complete, but it's safer this
way.

If you're not sure how to copy, follow the following procedure: Highlight the I386 folder
using Windows Explorer. Right-click the folder and select "Copy". Then open the
XPSETUP folder. The folder should be empty at the moment. Right click the empty space
in the window and click "Paste". A very lengthy copy procedure will take place.

To verify that you have copied the folder and not moved it, return to the top of C: and
check that the I386 folder is still there and that the original files in that folder are still
there.
3. Create an ASCII text file with only the word "Windows " (without the quotes and including
the final space after the word "Windows") in it, followed by a new line. To do this, open up
Notepad. Notepad can be found in your Start menu -> Programs -> Accessories ->
Notepad. Type the word "Windows" without the quotes and following my case exactly
(that is, "W" is a capital letter and the rest are in small letters). Then type one additional
space. Finally, hit the ENTER key. Do not add anything else to this file. Do not change
anything - for example, do not type everything in capital letters or anything like that. The
contents of the file must be exactly as I said, or Windows setup will issue an error
message.

Save the file with the filename "WIN51" (include the quotes so that Notepad will not add
a ".txt" extension behind your back) in C:\XPSETUP. Again, the filename's spelling and
case must be exactly like mine.

If your PC or laptop originally came with XP Home, make a copy of the file you just
created and call it "WIN51IC". If you are using XP Home Service Pack 1 (SP 1), make
two copies of the file and call them "WIN51IC" and "WIN51IC.SP1". If you are using XP
Home Service Pack 2 (SP 2), make three copies of the file and call them "WIN51IC",
"WIN51IC.SP1" and "WIN51IC.SP2". All the copies of the files should be in C:\XPSETUP.

If your PC or laptop originally came with XP Professional, make a copy of the file you just
created and call it "WIN51IP". If you are using XP Professional Service Pack 1 (SP 1),
make two copies of the file and call them "WIN51IP" and "WIN51IP.SP1". If you are using
XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP 2), make three copies of the file and call them
"WIN51IP", "WIN51IP.SP1" and "WIN51IP.SP2". All the copies of the files should be in
C:\XPSETUP.

Note carefully what I said above. You may be running XP SP 2 now, but if your PC came
with XP SP 1, you should create the files for XP SP 1. There is an exception to this. If
your PC or laptop came with XP or XP SP 1, but you want your Windows install CD to
install XP SP 2, create the WIN51 files needed for SP 2 and follow the procedure for
slipstreaming Windows service pack 2 (SP 2) into the Windows setup CDROM given in
the next step.

4. If your PC or laptop came originally with XP or XP SP 1 (service pack 1) but you want
your Windows setup disk to install XP SP 2, do the following. Otherwise, skip to the next
step.

Note that even if you have since updated your computer to SP 2, you will still need to do
this step if you want your setup CD to install Windows XP Service Pack 2. The reason is
that updating your running Windows system does not automatically update the I386
 directory. Your I386 directory still contains the Windows setup files belonging to whatever
version of Windows you had when you first bought your PC/laptop.

1. Download Windows XP service pack 2 from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-
4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en Save it anywhere you like except in
the C:\XPSETUP folder. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will assume you saved it
as C:\XPSP2.EXE, that is, in the root folder with the filename "XPSP2.EXE".

Important: if you did not configure Windows to show you the full filename you
should probably do so before changing the name of the file. Otherwise, you may
be inadvertently saving the file as "XPSP2.EXE.EXE" without your knowing. (That
is, you see the filename as "XPSP2.EXE" in Windows Explorer but it's actually
"XPSP2.EXE.EXE".)

2. You will need to update the C:\XPSETUP\I386 folder to contain the updated SP 2
files. As a side benefit, the service pack 2 updater will also create a few files
(including setup.exe) in the C:\XPSETUP folder. This process of integrating the
service pack files into the original XP or XP SP 1 is known as "slipstreaming".

To slipstream SP 2, first open up a command prompt. To do this, click the Start

menu, select the Run menu item, and enter the words "cmd". Click the OK button.
A black command prompt window will open.

Enter the following line into the window and press the ENTER key.

C:\XPSP2.EXE /integrate:C:\XPSETUP

After the program finishes, you can close the command prompt window. If you
look into your XPSETUP folder, you will notice a few new files there.

5. At this point, the C:\XPSETUP directory contains all the files that will be copied to your
Windows Setup CDROM. Don't worry if the directory does not contain files like
"setup.exe" which you see on the retail CDROMs. You won't need it for a fresh install
from the bootable CDROM. Note: You will only have "setup.exe" if you had to slipstream
Service Pack 2 as mentioned earlier. The Service Pack 2 slipstreamer creates setup.exe
for you.
6. Now open the wxp10.zip file that you downloaded earlier. Simply doubleclicking it in
Windows explorer should do the trick. Go into the cds directory and into wxphome (or
wxppro; it doesn't matter which) directory, followed by the files directory. Drag the
"w2ksect.bin" file into C:\ (the root directory/folder of drive C:). Don't get creative and
 place it in some other directory. If you do that, ImgBurn will not be able to find
c:\w2ksect.bin later.

Burning the Bootable Windows Install CD/DVD

1. If you have not downloaded ImgBurn, get it now and install it. You will find it listed on
thefreecountry.com's Free CD and DVD Burners and Copying Software page.

The version of ImgBurn I used to create this guide was 2.3.2.0. My cursory test of a later
version, 2.4.0.0, found that the resulting disk was not made correctly. Therefore, you
should avoid 2.4.0.0. Either use the earlier version or get a version later than 2.4.0.0, if
any, that has the bugs fixed.

2. Open up Notepad, and copy the text from the box below (make sure you select
everything - click in the box and type Ctrl+A to select all) and paste it into a blank
Notepad window. Save the file as "XPSETUP.ibb" (including the quotes, which you need
to prevent Notepad from adding a ".txt" extension to your filename) somewhere on your
desktop (or anywhere you like). Do not add or delete anything from the file.

3. Start ImgBurn. Select Mode -> Build from the menu.

4. Select File -> Load Project from the menu. A dialog box will open. Select the
XPSETUP.ibb file you saved earlier and click "Open". If you can't find a "Load Project"
item on the File menu, it means you did not carry out the previous step. Go back and do
it.
 5. Click the "Labels" tab on the right side of the screen. Change the label in the ISO9660 field to one
of the following, depending on what type of bootable setup CD you're making.

Version Label to Use

Windows XP Home OEM WXHOEM_EN
Windows XP Home SP 1 OEM XRMHOEM_EN
Windows XP Home SP 1a and SP 2 OEM X1AHOEM_EN
Windows XP Professional OEM WXPOEM_EN
Windows XP Professional SP 1 OEM XRMPOEM_EN
Windows XP Professional SP 1a and SP 2 OEM X1APOEM_EN
6. This step is probably optional if you can't be bothered. I seem to recall having entered a
wrong label in the past without having the Windows installer fail on me.

7. Finally, click the "Write" icon at the bottom of the window. To find out which picture the
"Write" button is (there are no visual cues, even as to which picture actually represents a
button), hover your mouse over the the pictures near the bottom of the window and wait
for the tooltip to appear. When you hover your mouse over the correct picture, a tooltip
will appear with the text "Write". (Note: depending on your version of ImgBurn, your icon
may read "Build" instead of "Write".)

8. A dialog box will probably pop up saying something like "You've only selected 1 folder!
C:\XPSETUP. Does the 'XPSETUP' folder represent the root directory for the image
content? (Otherwise the 'XPSETUP' folder will be visible in the root directory of the
image.)" Click "Yes" to this. Basically, you want the contents of the XPSETUP folder to be
what you see when you view the CDROM's top level directory.

9. If you get an error message from ImgBurn regarding "c:\w2ksect.bin", it means that you
have missed one of the steps outlined above. Return to that paragraph and complete the
step before continuing.

At this point, the bootable Windows setup disk will be created. To use it, place the CD into the
CD drive, make sure your BIOS is set to boot first from your CD drive, and reboot. Voila, if all
goes well, the Windows installer starts up and you're on the way to reinstalling your system.

If you encounter any problems, you've probably missed a step somewhere. Missed steps
account for the majority of the problems encountered by those who try this out. You might also
want to check the FAQ for How to Create Windows XP Setup CD for a Windows-Preloaded
System to see if the answer is also given there.

Copyright 2006-2008 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved. Get more "How To" guides and
tutorials from http://www.howtohaven.com/.

This article can be found at http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml

howtohaven Site News Feed
Do you find this article useful? You can learn of new articles and scripts that are published on
howtohaven.com by subscribing to the RSS newsfeed. Simply point your newsfeed reader or a
browser that supports RSS feeds at http://www.howtohaven.com/howtohaven.xml.

Please Do Not Reprint This Article

This article is copyrighted. Please do not reproduce this article in whole or part, in any form,
without obtaining my written permission.

Related Pages
How to Create a Bootable "Live" Windows Rescue CD
How to Delete Undeletable, Locked, Busy or Currently In-Use Files in Windows

Free Partitioning Software - Copy, Create, Move, Resize, Convert, Undelete Partitions

Free Antivirus Software

Free Spyware/Adware/Trojan/Hijackers Detection, Removal and Prevention

Free Secure File / Disk Deletion (Wipe) Utilities - wipe your hard disk before giving away
your system

How to Perform a Full Manual Defragmentation of Your Hard Disk Under Windows Vista

Free Defragmentation Utilities / Free Defraggers

Free Audio CD Rippers

Free DVD/CD Emulators, Free Virtual CD/DVD Drives

Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software

Newest Pages
How to Set Up a Standard User Account (or Limited Account) on Windows Vista and
Windows 7 for Daily Use
Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial: How to Create and Design a Website with Dreamweaver
CS5
 How to Slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 3 to Create an Integrated XP Setup Disk
with SP 3

How to Back Up Your Hard Disk in Windows

How to Securely Prepare Your Old Computer for Disposal

How to Work Around the Missing Up Arrow Button in Vista's Windows Explorer

How to Create an Emergency Windows Rescue CD

How to Create / Start Your Own Website: The A-Z Guide

How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup CD/DVD on a Preinstalled Windows

System

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml