Reinstalling Windows on a Laptop that doesnt have a CD Drive

[Panthr710]

Alright, so I have a Toshiba M200, and it is awesome, but neither the WLAN nor the plain jane LAN will work, it connects and gets an IP address, but wont get on the internet. But anyway, I'm wanting to just reformat, but since the computer doesnt have a DVD drive (the recovery disc is a DVD) I tried hooking up the external drive I put together, but it wont boot from that drive.

Anyone have any ideas? I dont really want to have to buy the Toshiba drive or pay out the butt for the service people to do it.

Thanks for the help

Dan

 

[TheCanuck]

Did it use to connect to the internet? Sounds like the winsock is corrupted. This is a fix for XP (not sure if it works on Tablet Edition):

http://www.nrctv.net/winsock_xp_fix.htm

Here is the manual fix if the above can't be used: http://www.apisto.dsl.pipex.com/site1/XPWinsock.htm


I've also run into issues with Adware disabling Internet Explorer and a quick fix was to use Firefox instead. You should probably also do a scan with adaware, spybot, hijackthis etc.

 

[JohnDoh]

accidentally find xp online, buy an xp cd, or put linux on it........ or get a dvd drive from bestbuy and return it

 

[uOpt]

Create three partitions.

Install Linux or FreeBSD in the third.

Format the second partition as DOS and copy the CD contents onto it (over the network).

Boot DOS from anywhere and start the setup in the second partition, pointing it to install into the first partition.