Installing XP by USB- works on Optiplex, doesn't work on ASROCK MB- huh? \ VOGONS

Installing XP by USB- works on Optiplex, doesn't work on ASROCK MB- huh?

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First post, by jfarms

Posted on 2021-11-02, 21:51

jfarms Offline

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I'm so confused as to what's going on. I have an ASROCK b75m-itx and two optiplexes- a 7010 and a 9010 SFF. I've successfully installed XP SP3 via USB in both optiplexes multiple times. I try to do the same thing in the ASROCK and when it goes to boot from the USB the screen just stays black with a blinking underscore. The BIOS in the ASROCK is the newest available.

I've read all kinds of blog posts suggesting all kinds of different things, and none of the answers/suggestions have gotten me any closer to my goal. (Somehow my w7 installation for this dual boot wound up getting corrupted as well in my repeated attempts to boot from USB- I had to take out the drive and wipe it in AOMEI before being able to reinstall W7).

Literally the only thing I haven't tried yet is installing via CD because all my sata CD drives are damaged, so I'll need to use the one in the Optiplex.

(I did initially get the ASROCK successfully with dual-boot w7 & XP system because I had installed the dual boot in an optiplex and just plopped it into the ASROCK. One of the reasons I wiped it to re-install is everytime I booted into XP, I would get 3 or 4 'install drivers for new device' pop-ups for an 'unknown' device. I never had those pop-ups in the optiplex, and I installed all the drivers from ASROCK support- had never installed drivers before on that OS when it was in the optiplex).

Thanks for any ideas. Hoping fellow retro enthusiasts can share some ideas since other forums prefer to tell me to use w10 🤣.

Reply 1 of 4, by jakethompson1

Posted on 2021-11-02, 22:05

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It looks like that board has only USB 3. USB 3 controllers are not backward compatible at the driver level with USB 1.1/2 ones. You either need to slipstream the USB 3 drivers into a custom Windows XP install image, or just use the CD drive. You likely face the slipstream issue anyway for SATA AHCI drivers.

Reply 2 of 4, by jfarms

Posted on 2021-11-02, 22:23

jfarms Offline

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2021-11-02, 22:05:

It looks like that board has only USB 3. USB 3 controllers are not backward compatible at the driver level with USB 1.1/2 ones. You either need to slipstream the USB 3 drivers into a custom Windows XP install image, or just use the CD drive. You likely face the slipstream issue anyway for SATA AHCI drivers.

Ahhh that makes sense! I had already slipstreamed in AHCI drivers. Do you have any idea what USB 3 controller driver would go into that install? https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B75M-ITX/#Download doesn't list any XP USB drivers (which makes sense considering XP only had support for 2.0). Would you try just the Intel usb 3 driver for w7 x86?

Reply 3 of 4, by dormcat

Posted on 2021-11-03, 08:47

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I might have encountered a similar case: my friend's Asus K20DA had a failing 1TB HDD with Win8.1 inside so he asked me to upgrade it with SSD and Win10. No matter how hard I tried and adjusted various BIOS/UEFI settings, however, the system just refused to boot on my official Win10 USB flash drive, even if the flash drive is clearly visible in BIOS/UEFI. In the end I had to burn the ISO to a DVD+R and it went through smoothly.

Reply 4 of 4, by jfarms

Posted on 2021-11-03, 12:11

jfarms Offline

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dormcat wrote on 2021-11-03, 08:47:

I might have encountered a similar case: my friend's Asus K20DA had a failing 1TB HDD with Win8.1 inside so he asked me to upgrade it with SSD and Win10. No matter how hard I tried and adjusted various BIOS/UEFI settings, however, the system just refused to boot on my official Win10 USB flash drive, even if the flash drive is clearly visible in BIOS/UEFI. In the end I had to burn the ISO to a DVD+R and it went through smoothly.

That's strange to me because I was able to get Windows 7 to install from USB no problem- so there shouldn't have theoretically been the same driver problems with w10- but they both may just be BIOS/controller issues. Some MB's have pre-boot driver loading, and that seems to make a difference with EHCI drivers for USB 2.0. That feature isn't available on my ASROCK, so after many more attempts in BIOS I had to give up on installing XP via USB and used super long sata cables to connect the dvd drive from one computer into the open case of another. Either way, sounds like we both got our OS's installed and working. One of the biggest headache savers when it comes to computers IMO is having lots of accumulated spare parts you can use to troubleshoot/solve problems.

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