One day, my friend's computer system broke down, and I was taken from afar to my house, asking me to reinstall the system. Installing the operating system is simple, but this guy is scratching his head that he didn't even configure the optical drive to buy a computer!
Although I have long known that it can be started through a USB flash drive, I have also practiced it on some machines, but it has never been successful. It is probably related to the motherboard. In addition, even if you can boot to DOS through a USB flash drive, but because there is no optical drive, you have to solve the problem of installing the operating system from the iso image file. In Windows, we usually load the iso image file through the Virtual optical drive, but what about DOS? Some virtual optical drive software under DOS has also been used in practice according to the methods found on the Internet, but the operation is very complicated and needs to handle the NTFS disk format identification problem under DOS, you need to execute the SmartDrv.exe program to increase the disk access speed under DOS (otherwise, the disk I/O buffer is not provided). Various DOS virtual optical drive software have some limitations, and the results are not successful. I checked some information from the Internet again. I thought it was too troublesome to install the DOS system. I decided to try to install it from WinPE. In the end, it was an exception, so I decided to write down this process here.
The installation process includes the following steps: 1) create a USB flash drive for the WinPE system; 2) create or obtain an image file for the operating system installation disk (. (iso file); (3) modify the BOIS startup settings to start from the U disk; (4) use a USB flash drive to start the WinPE system, create a virtual optical drive under WinPE, and load the ISO file of the operating system installation disk; 5) execute the system installation program from the virtual optical drive and start to install the operating system. The following describes the steps and precautions.
- Create a USB flash drive for the WinPE System
The tools to be prepared for this step are: A winpe system image file: Old Mao Tao winpe upan. iso1_a green version of The ultraiso.exe program;
The old peach winpe USB flash drive has many versions available for download on the Internet, so we will not provide the website here. These versions can be roughly divided into two types, one is a lite version of about 25 MB. One is the full version, which is about 109 MB in size. Compared with the lite version, the full version only includes many common tool programs, such as Ghost, virtual optical drive software, and disk tools. The lite version only has the basic functions of winpe. In the subsequent installation steps, you need to use the virtual optical drive in winpe. Therefore, you have selected the complete version of old peach winpe USB flash drive _ final modified version v09.11.
The blue-green version of ultraiso.exe is used to format the U disk and create the winpe boot disk based on the winpe image file. Ultraiso.exe only has one program file and runs it directly. Generally, the downloaded "old peach winpe USB flash drive" package contains, if not, you can go to the next one separately.
Creation process:
A. Run ultraiso.exe, click "file-> open" in the menu, select the image file "old peach winpe USB flash drive. ISO", and click "OK ";
B. Click "Boot disc-> write hard disk image" in the menu. In the displayed dialog box, select your USB flash drive from the drop-down list in the "hard disk drive" column, set the "Write mode ".
There are two ways to write: "USB-HDD +" and "USB-ZIP +", I don't know what the two ways are different, but the online information is generally considered "USB-ZIP +" mode of better compatibility. I am using the former "USB-HDD +" method in this installation.
Click "write" to complete the creation process. Follow these steps:
Note: This step will format your entire USB flash drive. Please save the files needed in the USB flash drive to another place before proceeding.
- Create or obtain the image file (. iso file) of the operating system installation disk)
There are many versions of system installation disk image files available for download on the internet, generally in. ISO format. If you do not want to use the version downloaded from the Internet, you can also create an ISO Image File Based on the system installation CD. Run the ultraiso program, click "tools-> Create a CD image file" in the menu, and follow the instructions on the interface to create an image file. The process is simple and will not be detailed here.
I am using Deepin_GhostXP_SP3_Zhizun_V10.0.ISO in depth. This is a Ghost operating system and the installation process is fast.
Note: Some system installation disk images may cause errors and cannot be installed using a virtual optical drive in WinPE. I tried to install a self-extracted non-ghostversion system installation disk image in WinPE, which can be loaded to the virtual optical drive, but an error occurred while running the installation program. The specific cause has not been clarified, and may be related to the installation program of the CD itself.
Copy the operating system CD image file to the non-system partition of the target machine to be installed, or if your WinPE boot U disk has enough space, you can also copy it to the boot disk.
- Modify the BOIS startup settings to start from the U disk.
Restart the computer on which you want to install, set the preferred boot device in BOIS to start from USB-HDD + or USB-ZIP + ", it is consistent with the "Write method" set when the WinPE boot disk is created in step 1. After the settings are complete, insert the USB flash drive and press "F10" to save the BOIS and exit. After the computer restarts, The WinPE system will be loaded from the USB flash drive.
- Start the WinPE system through a USB flash drive, create a virtual optical drive under WinPE, and load the ISO file of the operating system installation disk.
In this operation, the old peach winpe USB flash drive _ final modified V09.11 system itself has its own virtual optical drive software. Therefore, after entering the WinPE system, find and open the virtual optical drive program from "Start Menu-all programs", follow the prompts to create a virtual drive, and then load the operating system to install the image file to the Virtual Drive.
- Execute the system installation program from the virtual optical drive and start to install the operating system.
Select the installer from the virtual drive for installation. After the installation program is started, the installation process is usually as follows: a. Copy the installation file first; B. Then restart the computer; c. Continue the installation process after the computer is restarted. Note that when you restart your computer in step 2, you need to restore the preferred boot device in BOIS settings to "boot from hard disk" before entering the system boot menu after the restart ". Then press "F10" to save and restart. The subsequent installation process is similar to the general installation process.
Summary: There are a lot of online information about how to start and install Windows pe usb flash drives without an optical drive. However, due to the wide variety of hardware and software environments, it may not be effective to copy the online methods as they are intact, you need to flexibly adapt to your actual situation. This article also summarizes the successes I have achieved in my own software and hardware environment. In some cases, exceptions may occur, for example, some USB flash drives may cause compatibility problems, which may lead to the failure to create a WinPE USB flash drive boot disk. Because some computer mainboards are of early production models and do not support starting from USB, this method cannot be used directly in this case, the method for creating a Dos virtual optical drive under MaxDos mentioned on the Internet may be a try.
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