Regardless, after my last writeup of the Windows ME release, I received lots of e-mails on how to "bury the cabs" on the HDD to make life a bit sweeter after the install.
Whoopie, we now have a clean, empty, formatted C: drive to load our OS onto. Now what? Well, the purpose of this article was to show how to get a clean, reliable install of Windows while burying the install cab files on the hard disk to save time and hassle later on. Since we have a boot disk with the xcopy command files on it, and hopefully a CD with the OS you choose to install, let's get going already! With the format over and done, switch to the C: and follow the next commands to create the neccessary directories and start the copy process.
C:\> MD WINDOWS
C:\> CD WINDOWS
C:\WINDOWS> MD MILL
C:\WINDOWS> CD MILL
C:\WINDOWS\MILL> XCOPY Z:\WIN98\*.*
In the last line, Z: being the drive letter of you CDROM drive containing the Windows installation CD, and \WIN98\ being the directory containing the cab files used for the install. This will give you a scrolling list of all the files being copied from that directory, and will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete at which you will end up with a command prompt once again. Now all we need to do is remove the floppy disk, the CDROM, and type in the following command to run setup....
C:\WINDOWS\MILL> SETUP /IE /IV /IS /IM /IQ /P J
The above command
and switches will speed up the process of loading Windows by turning off all the
goodies such as the annoying scandisk at the beginning of setup, checking for
disk space, creation of a startup disk, and turning off those annoying and time
eating hoaky ass splash screens during the install.
The last switch, /P J , changes the Windows power management from APM (which is a piece of shit IMHO and will lock systems in a heartbeat) to a more stable and useable ACPI interface. Without getting all technical, this just changes the power management mode that Windows uses to interface with the hardware. Trust me, ACPI will make you much happier in the end.
Well folks, some of you asked for
it, and here it all is. You may want to print this article to have it handy for
the install you may be about to undertake, or for future reference.
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