OS Install on older laptop: No CD drive, No USB boot option

[professorman]

I have a older laptop which used to run Win XP, however it crashed and now I want to re-install XP. It does NOT have a CD drive and it does NOT have USB boot option in the bios. How would I go about installing XP?

Attempts:
1) I have a external enclosure and I took the hard drive and stuck it in there and tried to install XP from my Vista laptop, however the XP install wouldnt run.
2) I have a external CD drive, I connect to the laptop, but and put the XP CD in it, and tried to boot, but I found I had no USB boot support.
3) It has a floppy drive, but I have no computers with a floppy drive to be able to even use this.

4) My last idea is to load some other OS on the hard drive, from my Vista Laptop, and then stick the drive back into the laptop, hopefully get support for my USB CD drive and do a XP install.

I guess if there is no way to install XP, I might be able to live with some other operating system, like gOS or linux or something. I would really like to get back XP on it though.

What are my options?

 

[Harvey]

What is the model? Have you e-mailed Toshiba's tech support to ask about this?

 

[professorman]

Ha, good idea... I hope they dont tell me to go buy a laptop CD drive from them though.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: professorman

Ha, good idea... I hope they dont tell me to go buy a laptop CD drive from them though.

If they do, personally, I'd recommend looking for a hot deal on a new laptop. You're a bit late for this deal from last week:

Staples has the following for $399.99 after a $30 easy rebate (no mailing) starting 15 Feb:

Compaq Presario CQ60-212 SKU 780117
AMD Athlon X-2 Dual-Core Processor QL-62
4GB RAM
250GB drive
15.6" display
SuperMulti 8X DVDñR/RW with Double Layer Support
5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1

Aside from the fact that it's a great machine, especially for the price, all of the XP drivers are available for it.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Go buy an external floppy drive. problem solved.

You can read through this and try it.
http://www.syschat.com/install...out-floppy-cd-463.html

 

[professorman]

I already have a 2 month old laptop. I am just trying to restore this old laptop so that I can give my 3 year old so that she becomes tech-savy.

I am currently trying this solution. Hard drive-windows-xp-installation-no-floppycd-drive


I will let you guys know how it turns out.

 

[MadRat]

Begin the install with the hard drive mounted in another machine, then after the first reboot swap it into that one

 

[ImDonly1]

I had a Toshiba laptop I had to fix once for someone. It did not have a cd-rom drive either. What you have to do is install windows from your network. You setup a tftp server with the windows cd in your computer and it installs over the network. Here is the exact website I used http://home.allegiance.tv/~joem298/

 

[professorman]

Okay. I will try the network install when I finish trying this method.

I am currently trying to get MS-DOS to run. Should I put the ISO file of MS-DOS directly on the hard drive and the bios will run it or do I extract the ISO file to the hard drive and the bios will run it?

The problem I am having now is that I format the hard drive (40GB), but I was trying to use FAT32 file system, well it failed at 32GB, so I partition the drive to be 29GB, but when I put it in the laptop, it says it has invalid file system. Do you know what could be wrong?

 

[JesseKnows]

Put the drive in the external enclosure. Connect to another computer and create a 32 MB partition and make sure it is active.
Obtain a bootable Win95/win98 floppy.
Put the hard drive in the laptop.
Boot from the floppy and "format c:/s". That would make the hard drive boot to the Win98 (==DOS 7) command prompt.
Put the drive back in your external enclosure. Connect to the other computer and copy the entire directory i386 from the WinXP CD's content to a directory i386 on the external hard drive.
--> something about smartdrv
Put the drive back in the laptio and boot from it. Go to i386 and run winnt.exe.
This should start the install as usual. Install to C:, do not format or convert!
WHen done you can use a partition utility to expand the partition to the entire drive and/or convert to NTFS.

I am currently trying to get MS-DOS to run. Should I put the ISO file of MS-DOS directly on the hard drive and the bios will run it or do I extract the ISO file to the hard drive and the bios will run it?

You extract the ISO. However, MS-DOS on ISO? is that a bootable CD? if so, you need to make some files system/hidden so it'll boot.

Been there, done that as above. Mostly.
I had one case where I couldn't run winnt.exe, and instead I installed win98 in the same way and then upgraded from 98 to XP. Yes, it's time consuming

-->The XP install really really wants smartdrv to be running for the install. It's a disk cache that can cut the install time by orders of magnitute. Try to find smartdrv on the win98 floppy and install it and the memory manager it needs, Google for details.

 

[loup garou]

You could also try ultimate deployment appliance for a network install if you have vmware server/player on another machine on your network. I've used it before and it's very easy to setup.

 

[professorman]

Each time I re-format the drive with my vista laptop, partitioned to 30GB, with FAT32 file system, when I put it in the old laptop, it says invalid partition. I can boot from a startup diskette and go into the C:\ drive and start installing XP, but when it restart and it is supposed to boot from the hard drive, it says invalid partition. What is going on?

 

[degibson]

Try a network boot, if your poor old soldier of a laptop can support it.

 

[JesseKnows]

Originally posted by: professorman
Each time I re-format the drive with my vista laptop, partitioned to 30GB, with FAT32 file system, when I put it in the old laptop, it says invalid partition. I can boot from a startup diskette and go into the C:\ drive and start installing XP, but when it restart and it is supposed to boot from the hard drive, it says invalid partition. What is going on?

I believe the BIOS sees the hard drive geometry differently on the laptop than the OS sees it on the vista laptop via USB.

A variation is to boot from floppy on your laptop with the hard drive inside. Fdisk to create one 31GB partition. Format C:/s from the floppy. Confirm the laptop boots from the hard drive.
(It's possible that fdisk on the laptop will fail because of junk on the drive from previous partitioning attempts. If so, try to boot-and-nuke [google for that] the drive on the laptop, to clear it to zeros)
Now move the hard drive to be an extarnal to the vista machine. The partition should still be seen. If it's not, I cant advise further
Copy the i386 directory from the CD to the hard drive. Set up smartdrv if possible.
Return drive to the laptop. Boot from the hard drive. Run i386\winnt.exe.