Introduction & Installation

Introduction

1.1 Diskless Angel is designed to take operating system to run in system memory, making possible the logical as well as physical disconnection and re-connection, if necessary, of fixed disks in a computer. Physical disconnection or removal of all fixed disks from a standalone computer thus makes possible running a standalone computer in a diskless way. So let us see how this can be done in computer running Microsoft Windows 2K/XP.

Installation of WinXP

1.2 Diskless Angel XP Demo version provides, amongst other tools, a boot-up virtual memory driver with a maximum size of 1.5 Gb. It is therefore possible to use this Demo version to take a full size Win2K/XP to boot up and run totally in ram.

1.3 The easiest way to successfully run a diskless Win2K/XP computer is to start it with a blank hard disk and install a fresh and full version of Win2K/XP on it. Of course, sufficient system memory is required. For running a full version of Win2K/XP, at least 1 Gb system memory is required. With system memory less than 1 Gb, one can use other tools to trim down the size of the operating system first, such as xplite or nlite.

1.4 Besides Diskless Angel XP, a good bootloader is also needed for the purpose of loading a system partition or a system disk image to system memory before Win2K/XP and Diskless Angel XP start to boot up and run totally in ram. A good hard disk bootloader for such a purpose is GRUB4DOS. For network bootloader, one can use PXELinux. Of course, other bootloaders can also be used if sufficiently customized.

1.5 In the following example, the computer runs with a fixed hard disk with two partitions and 1 Gb system memory. This first partition is already set up with a WinXP and many other applications and stored with data files. And there is not enough system memory for taking this WinXP system image and other applications to run all in ram. So the second partition is formatted into a blank partition and is used for setting up a fresh full sized WinXP for use.

1.6 After setting up another WinXP on the second partition, one has to set up at least the video-card driver if one wants to use the Standy Mode. Putting WinXP to sleep in Standy Mode in ram of a diskless computer makes Instant-On wake up in seconds. Running a diskless computer with WinXP sleeping and waking up in ram recyclingly is a superb experience.

1.7 A full English version of WinXP is about 1.25 Gb in size and can be compressed into 840 Mb and stored in a compressed NTFS partition. So in the following example, a boot-up virtual memory disk of 850 Mb is used. After setting up WinXP and the necessary hardware drivers, one can install Diskless Angel XP Demo.

Installation of Diskless Angel XP Demo

1.8 One can download Diskless Angel XP Demo (hereafter referred to as Diskless Angel) at http://www.disklessangel.com and extract the installation programme from the zip file as follows:

After double-clicking daxp_eng_070101.exe above, the following screen appears:

After pressing I Agree:

And Next:

Select the default folder as shown above by clicking Install for installing Diskless Angel in the second partition in this example where the second WinXP has just been freshly installed as described above.

And after pressing Close, it finishes the installation of Diskless Angel XP Demo.

After installing Diskless Angel, the desktop appears as follows:

After installing Diskless Angel, one has to perform a step to install the bundled virtual memory disk driver to WinXP for use by double-clicking the Diskless Angel Icon on the desktop above and opening it as follows:

By selecting Tools Menu and Install Driver within, WinXP pops up a screen asking for confirmation as follows:

Press Continue Anyway:

The virtual memory disk driver is reported as updated. And by opening Diskless Angel again, it can be seen that in Diskless Angel opening screen, a Diskless Angel Virtual SCSI Controller has been added in addition to the two Primary IDE Channels. But there is a red cross against it, indicating that it is not ready for use.

To continue with this driver installation, one has to reboot the computer now.