Creating USB bootable setup of Windows XP

Hi Friends,

In last blog I had told you how to create a USB bookable setup of Windows 7 or Vista. Now I am going to tell how to create a USB bookable setup of Windows XP.

Winodws XP is old operating system, it was not developed for USB installation, so in this we have to use a software named "WinSetupFromUSB". You can download it from here or here (better to download the stable version of it).

You first need to download it and install it. You also need a ISO image or Setup folder of XP, and a pen drive of atleast 1 GB. In case if you have ISO imgae you also need a Virtual DVD Rom* to mount it.

Now follow the following steps one by one (Here I am using 0.2.3 version) :


1) Run the WinSetupFromUSB.

2) Connect your USB Pen Drive (Min 1 GB in size).

3) You will see it in USB selection, if not then refresh it.

4) Now choose the path of Windows XP, it may be your Virtual dvd rom or Folder where you have setup files.

5) Choose the Force Target disk type as Removable.

6) Now Choose RMPrepUSB, to format and prepare you USB drive.

7) If you have 2 GB or less then choose FAT16, else in case of more then 2 GB the Choose NTFS or FAT32 and rest as same as shown in above pic (Choose "Boot as HDD", and "XP bootables [NTLDR]" do not change other things). Click on Prepare, and except all the things.

8) After finishing, exit RMPrepUSB, and wait for 5 second, then click on GO.

9) In last accept the License Agreement.

That's it. Now you can use this Pen drive to install XP.

Very Important : In XP case installation from USB is little bit different from CD. You have to boot from Pen drive twice, and choose first Text part of setup and then second time GUI part of Setup. If you don't do like this then you will get a error, and installation will not complete.


Extra Links :
*For Virtual Dvd Rom go for "Virtual Clone Drive".

How to enable Gmail Desktop Notification in Firefox

Hi Friends,

Many of us using Firefox as there default web browser, and Gmail as default mail client. But one thing we are missing in Firefox is Gmail notification. Firefox still does not support it natively. But we can get this feature in Firefox with the help of add-ons named "HTML Desktop Notifications". It is based on HTML 5.

You can install it from this link. For more details you can visit its homepage also here.

After install you have to restart your Firefox, and after that you need to just login in your Gmail, and enable the Desktop notification from settings.

Update :

With Firefox 17 and above this is not working properly and this is also reported. You can download the updated fixed version of addon from here or here (please install this at your risk only). It is working fine for me till now.

Link of Issue :
http://code.google.com/p/ff-html5notifications/issues/detail?id=59
http://code.google.com/p/ff-html5notifications/issues/detail?id=58

Creating USB bootable setup of Windows Vista and 7

Hi Friends,

Now a days DVDs and CDs are replaced by USB Pen drive. Today's smart and ultra notebooks are coming without any DVD or CD ROM. And we even don't use DVD and CD any more. But when we need to re-install or install a new Operating System (OS) in our computer then we need this DVD or CD Rom.

But there is a very good alternative for it. We can boot from USB Pen drive and install a new OS from there (USB boot should be supported by Mother Board, only very old mother board does not have this feature).

Most of us today using Windows OS (XP, Vista, 7 or 8). In this blog I am explaining only for Vista and after words OS trick to make a Bootable installation USB Pen Drive. For other OS I will explain on different blog.

Microsoft had made Vista and onward OS USB friendly, so it is quite easier to make Bootable installation USB pen drive for them.

You have two options for it :

1) Command based :

This work only on Vista and onward OS, not on XP.

Open CMD with administrator privilege. You can do it by right click on cmd and then select Run as Administrator.

Give following commands one by one :

• diskpart

• list disk

• select disk x (Here x should be your pen drive disk number that you seen is list disk)

• clean

• create partition primary

• active

• format fs=ntfs quick

• assign

• exit

Now you have to copy all files from ISO image of setup to Pen drive. You can do this in 2 ways :

• Use following command  

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (Here d: is your setup path* and e: is your Pen Drive path)

• Or just copy all files from ISO image (or setup) and Paste it to Pen Drive.

2) MS Tool

This work only on XP Sp2 and onward OS.

You can also use a MS Tool named "Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool" for creating Windows 7 setup USB pen drive. 

You can download it from here, and you need a ISO image* of Windows 7 for it.


*For mounting an ISO image you can use any free Virtual Dvd Rom. One of them you can download from here.