6 floppy disks?

[ClickHere2Surf.com]

I normally install windows with i386\winnt but someone told me it's better if you make the 6 startup disks.

How do I make them from the XP CD?

Thanks

[Darren Wilson]

I have always booted directly from the CD to install XP (even on RAID configurations).

If this is something that corresponds to your other posts regarding installing XP on RAID, then the easiest way to do it (and to see the fullsize of your RAID stripe) is to get a normal Win98 boot disk, copy the format.com & smartdrv.exe commands off of the Win98 CD to it. In the Autoexec.bat file on the floppy, add the line:

smartdrv=16384

This way you will be able to FDISK to the correct size and to format the striped RAID also to the full size, from the floppy. After that you can either boot from the XP cd and carry on the installation (leaving file system as it is) or copy the i386 folder to your HDD and run the winnt.exe setup program from there. As long as smartdrv is loaded, you should then install at a decent speed. If smartdrv is not loaded, then be prepared to wait a very long time for XP to install (hence why it is better to boot from teh CD and go from there).

[IT Len]

Just in case you still have your heart set on the floppies...although I think Darren's right on the best way to do achieve this...

You can find the downloads you need to create startup disks and all that, for all the MS OS versions <a href="http://www.drd.dyndns.org/index2.html" target="_blank">here.</a> [Click on "Boot Disks."]

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you'll see the disk download sites for both Pro and Home versions.

[Capricorn]

Also look at:- <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q310994&" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q310994&</a>

I have used these disks when I got an error message using the CD. The disks got around the error.