Installing Windows on a laptop w/o removable drives

[NYHoustonman]

OK, So I formatted and installed windows on a new laptop hard drive (using another laptop, with a CD-ROM drive). I figured I'd be able to (hopefully) just transfer the hard drive over, but no luck. I get the stop error mentioned in the summary at startup, whether I'm booting into safe mode or not. Now, that stop error supposedly has to do with lack of access to a boot device, or some device driver needed for startup:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324103
So the problem is that I can't even get into Windows to try and fix this. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of situation? I'm open to reinstalling Windows in ways that don't involve using removable media (i.e. copying it to the hard drive) but I'm not even sure if that'd work.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: NYHoustonman
OK, So I formatted and installed windows on a new laptop hard drive (using another laptop, with a CD-ROM drive). I figured I'd be able to (hopefully) just transfer the hard drive over, but no luck. I get the stop error mentioned in the summary at startup, whether I'm booting into safe mode or not. Now, that stop error supposedly has to do with lack of access to a boot device, or some device driver needed for startup:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324103
So the problem is that I can't even get into Windows to try and fix this. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of situation? I'm open to reinstalling Windows in ways that don't involve using removable media (i.e. copying it to the hard drive) but I'm not even sure if that'd work.

That's correct.

You can copy the i386 folder to the HDD and set it up from there if you like; that's one fairly simple way... Another is to preinstall the correct HDD IDE controller drivers prior to the move, or else switch back to "PCI Standard IDE Controller" prior to the move, either of which should allow you to then boot.

 

[NYHoustonman]

Hmm, I didn't have the driver CD and couldn't find anything online, but... duh... standard ide controller...

In short, it worked, thanks .