Shakes1984,

First, review the Dimension 2100 manual found here:  <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Restart your computer, when the Dell Logo appears, press DEL to enter BIOS Setup. 

Highlight the Advanced menu selection.

Select the IDE Configuration and Press Enter.  Set the values as follows:

IDE Controller                  [Both]

Primary IDE-Master        [your hard drive model should be shown]

Primary IDE Slave          [None]

Secondary IDE-Master  [your CD-ROM model should be shown]

Secondary IDE-Slave    [None]

Exit the IDE Configuration Menu by pressing ESC.

Exit the Advanced Menu by pressing ESC.

Go to the Boot menu selection.  Set the values as follows:

Quiet Boot                       [Disabled]

Quick Boot                      [Disabled]

1st Boot Device             [Floppy]

2nd Boot Device           [ATAPI CD-ROM]

3rd Boot Device           [IDE-HD].

Press F10 to Save and Exit the BIOS Setup.

When your system restarts, you may or may not receive a "Press any Key to Boot from CD"  message" right after the Dell logo .  Press any key to boot from your Windows XP CD.  If  your system doesn't boot from your Windows XP CD, let us know.

Let us know how you fare.

Tony

 

 

If you can boot from floppy get a WIN98se Boot floppy that includes Himem.sys for XMS memory.

format the drive as bootable and active partition aka FDISK then FORMAT C: /s

Then Mount the drive in an external USB case and drag the contents of the entire CD ONTO

the drive.

Boot the drive to C:\

GOTO the I386 folder by CD I386

Type WINNT   /S:C:\I386  /T:C:\  /A

follow the prompts.

Do not change the fat32 leave disk intact.

Desktop graphics controllers — Unattended installation

 

EeeUser Forum / Help installing xp

run SmartDrv in the autoexec file, or you can type it manually

SmartDrv

simple as that.
There are some other tweaks that can be done with it, though they arent required really (I do tweak it some myself).
I wouldnt do an Xcopy in DOS without it personally, also the initial Winnt.exe is much faster with it loaded before you run Winnt.exe

SmartDrv can be sourced from the following boot disk:

Windows 98 SE FINAL, Version 4.10.2222, DOS REV 7.10 [4.10.2222], April 23, 1999
This would be a non basic or non OEM boot disk.

It also contains the following files (which BTW are required for my setup and not included as MS-DOS files are non Distributable)

COMMAND.COM             91.6 KB (93,890 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
DRVSPACE.BIN             67.2 KB (68,871 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
HIMEM.SYS             32.4 KB (33,191 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
IO.SYS                217 KB (222,390 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
SMARTDRV.EXE            44.3 KB (45,379 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
SYS.COM                18.5 KB (18,967 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
XCOPY32.MOD            40.5 KB (41,472 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98
XCOPY.EXE            3.78 KB (3,878 bytes)        MS-DOS WIN98

Bottom line, if you want to do this manually, download AEFDISK.
Create a win98 SE Boot Disk and use the HP Format Tool, format as FAt32
Also copy DrvSpace.bin as that is needed for SYS.COM, and Himem.sys, config.sys file would look like this:

device=himem.sys /TESTMEM:OFF
dos=high,umb
files=100
buffers=99
lastdrive=z
stacks=9,256

Then when booted to the USB it will be C drive, delete all Disk 2 partitions and format then reboot using AefDisk

The prompt MUST say C:\

AEFDISK 2 /delall
AEFDISK 2 /MBR
AEFDISK 2 /pri:0:0c
AEFDISK 2 /formatfat:1:EeePC

Once rebooted to the USB Drive (or SD Card), granted you have a folder called i386 on the USB drive, type the following commands.

SYS d:
MD d:\i386
XCOPY I386\*.* d:\i386\ /s /e /y

The following command will flush any left over cached files to the D drive after XCopy completes.
SMARTDRV /C

Copy smartdrv.exe as well as config.sys to the D drive:

COPY smartdrv.exe d:\smartdrv.exe /Y
COPY config.sys d:\config.sys /Y

Then reboot to the SSD, run SMARTDRV again, then type:

CD i386
winnt /S:C:\i386

You can convert to NTFS during the install, if you had a Winnt.sif file from Nlite it will not be recognised, you would need to change it to Unattend.txt and change:

MsDosInitiated=1
Filesystem=ConvertNTFS

Once Unattend.txt is in the i386 folder, the Winnt.exe comand then would be:
winnt /u:Unattend.txt /S:C:\i386

And should be good to go. It will have 2 boot OS selections though, choose XP, you will need to manually fix the boot.ini once windows loads. Will also need to remove DrvSpace.bin and the MS Dos Bootlog files, cleanup.