And that's where disaster struck. After reboot, the graphical part of setup loaded from the hard drive, but it immediately asked for the "Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 CD" to copy driver files. It couldn't find the USB drive because the graphical setup didn't have USB drivers loaded yet.
He saved the USB drive. On it, he created a single text file: I_AM_THE_KEY_TO_THE_PAST.txt . Then he went to wash the thermal paste off his hands, a king of a forgotten kingdom. install windows 2000 from usb
He learned the forbidden lore: This meant using a tool called mkisofs to create a bootable CD image, then writing that image to a USB drive using physdiskwrite in raw mode. But that only got him to the blue text-mode setup. Once that loaded, it would ask for the "CD-ROM driver" and freeze. And that's where disaster struck
Ideally a machine with Legacy BIOS support (UEFI is generally incompatible without a CSM/Legacy mode). He saved the USB drive
The CNC router’s ancient motherboard made a grinding sound from its case fan. The screen flickered to 16 colors, then to 256. The Windows 2000 Professional startup sound—that ethereal, hopeful chord—chimed through a dusty speaker.
“You can’t install Windows 2000 from USB,” his friend Maya had said. “It doesn’t have native USB mass storage drivers during setup. It’s like trying to put diesel in a horse.”