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Installing Windows on a laptop with parallel external CD-ROM

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DAGTA

Diamond Member
I have a laptop with a formatted hard drive and I'm trying to install Windows on it using a parallel port external CD-ROM. I do not have access
to an internal CD-ROM drive. The windows boot disk does not detect the drive so a valid CD-ROM drive is not found. I've looked on the
manufacturer's site and the DOS driver does not get the system to detect the drive.

The drive is a BackPack CD-RW 192100.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
-DAGTA
 
You need 2 drivers - 1 to enable the parallel port for data transfer and 1 for the CD drive itself. The manufacturer of the parallel port drive should have DOS drivers...

Here is a link to a page with the correct drivers. Scroll down to "bpcd_dos.exe" and download and use that. If you've already tried that and it doesn't work, then be sure that the parallel port driver is being loaded BEFORE the CD-ROM driver in your config.sys file. They also have a few test utilities you can download to try and figure out what's going on.
 
On a related topic, one option is a network install of the OS. I know its possible but a little tricky.

When I had the problem you were having a year ago I found another elegant solution. I formatted the HD from the floppy drive. Then I used a floppy disk linux distro to boot up an OS. Then I mounted the HD and the CD drive, and copied over the OS files from the OS CD disk to the HD. Then I just ran a setup from the hard drive to install the OS!
 
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