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trouble w/ loading OS on lappy

D

dfarrales

Member
ok, i have a sony vaio pcg-sr7k (no internal floppy or cd-drive, only external usb ones). had win2k on there when i bought it used w/ tons of viruses. i decided to format instead of messing w/ each virus. b/c the drives were all USB, i coulnd't format using fdisk and reinstall the OS w/ the way it was set up. so i removed the HD, installed it into my amada 1700, formatted the HD and then installed win2k. then i put it back into the sony only to get the error msg: NTLDR is missing.

not sure where to go from here...
 
Originally posted by: dfarrales
ok, i have a sony vaio pcg-sr7k (no internal floppy or cd-drive, only external usb ones). had win2k on there when i bought it used w/ tons of viruses. i decided to format instead of messing w/ each virus. b/c the drives were all USB, i coulnd't format using fdisk and reinstall the OS w/ the way it was set up. so i removed the HD, installed it into my amada 1700, formatted the HD and then installed win2k. then i put it back into the sony only to get the error msg: NTLDR is missing.
not sure where to go from here...
Click to expand...

Installing on different hardware and trying to move it is just asking for problems. As Relayer said, can you boot from a USB cd drive (or borrow a pcmci cdrom drive?)

Bill
 
hmmm... SEEMED like a good idea =)

no, won't boot from a USB cd drive at all. i'll need to see if i can get a hold of a pcmci cdrom and give that a shot.
 
Since you have the ability to install the hard drive in your desktop, simply format the laptop drive as FAT32, make it bootable and COPY the i386 folder from your cd onto the laptop hard drive. Reinsert in your laptop and run winnt.exe (located inside the i386 folder) to install W2K.

After you have it running, you can decide if you want to convert the file system to NTFS.
 
how do i make the hd bootable for DOS? not sure i've done that before.

btw, i'm using the fdisk utility to format

thanks!
 
Originally posted by: dfarrales
how do i make the hd bootable for DOS? not sure i've done that before.

btw, i'm using the fdisk utility to format

thanks!
Click to expand...
From the "A:" DOS prompt, issue the following command: "format c:/s". Do not forget the "/s", as this is what will make your C: drive bootable and format it at the same time. Then do what kd7fhd suggested.
 
did as you guys said...

formatted the hd so it was bootable for DOS. copied the i386 folder to the hd. installed the hd in the sony. ran winnt.exe. it began the install by "copying the files to the hd". went to restart itself and... got the dang same msg again "NTLDR is missing".

frustrating... spent 3 hrs doing this and i get the same result. any ideas?

thanks,
deo
 
Originally posted by: dfarrales
did as you guys said...
formatted the hd so it was bootable for DOS. copied the i386 folder to the hd. installed the hd in the sony. ran winnt.exe. it began the install by "copying the files to the hd". went to restart itself and... got the dang same msg again "NTLDR is missing".
frustrating... spent 3 hrs doing this and i get the same result. any ideas?
thanks,
deo
Click to expand...
I googled your problem and I found a site that had some suggestions.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
 
I had the same problem reinstalling a OS on my x31, no internal cdrom or fdd and it would'nt boot to my firewire cdrw. I pulled the hard drive put it in a different laptop installed windows 98se on the hard drive put it back in the IBM. Used a firewire cdrom to do a upgrade install of Windows XP. I know its crude and time consuming but it worked.
 
earthling30: thanks for the googling... i tried it all and still getting the same results. one thing i noticed, it sd something about trying to boot to an unbootable source (maybe since there is no floppy or cd to boot to??). could it be that since there's no internal cd/floppy, it's causing this error? don't know why it won't see my usb cdrom. would a pcmcia cdrom be seen?

jdiddy: i tried what you did and i was able to get w98se on there and it booted up to it. i still couldn't get the lappy to see my usb cdrom, though. i had to move the hd back into my other lappy, copy over the install files for win2k, then reboot the hd in the sony and run the win2k update from the hd. started out fine. before it restarted (after it copied over the files or whatever it does the first time around), i checked to make sure the ntldr and ntdetect.com files were in the root. they were. so, i let it restart and guess what... same thing again.

this has me stumped. i thinking of going to an actual pc tech and have them take care of it. hate to do that though...

any other ideas, guys?
 
thanks a bunch earthling30. i've been doing some googling to and posting to several other forums. can't figure out what it is.

i won't be able to resond the rest of the evening and probably won't be able to try anything out 'till tomorrow afternoon. (i work graves for the PD).

trully appreciate everyone's help w/ this!
 
can't figure out where in the bios i can select an option for USB to be disabled.

it's PhoenixBIOS. in the 'advanced' tab, the primary IDE adapter says '9042MB' and nothing for the secondary IDE adapter. i drilled down in to the options for the scondary IDE. it gives me several options w/ the type as a value between 1-39 (depending on the predetermined type of HD) not sure where to go from there.

any more ideas?
 
when you get the "NTLDR is missing" message it almost sounds like the computer is trying to boot from a device other than the hard drive and that device does not have a bootable os on it.

BUT! it could be that the partition on the hard drive is not recognized as the ACTIVE partition. Even though you have partitioned it and formatted it on another computer, it still has to be the active partition before it will boot the computer. And without a floppy drive or cd rom to boot from and run fdisk to make it active, I don't have any other suggestions.
 
when i use fdisk and then create a partition, it asks me if i want to use the max available space AND make the partition active. after i reply "Y", it shows A for active in the partion list. am i doing something wrong here?

someone on another forum mentioned creating a second smaller partion, putting the w2k install files in there, making THAT partion bootable/active, then put that hd in the sony laptop and running the install from there.

i guess the problem i'm having it making that second partion in fdisk. if i have a formatted hd ( format c:\s) to make it bootable, then do i create the 1st larger partion? or do i create the smaller partion and make it active? then create the larger partition?
 
Originally posted by: dfarrales
can't figure out where in the bios i can select an option for USB to be disabled.
Click to expand...
I have a Sony Laptop as well and on mine I have to start hitting the "F2" key as soons as you press the power button.
 
Originally posted by: earthling30
Originally posted by: dfarrales
can't figure out where in the bios i can select an option for USB to be disabled.
Click to expand...
I have a Sony Laptop as well and on mine I have to start hitting the "F2" key as soons as you press the power button.
Click to expand...


i know how to get INTO bios, i just don't see where in the bios menus it would allow me to activate the USB
 
I don't know if making two partitions would work. It would be about the same as making one partition.
If you make two partitions and make the smaller one bootable/active, then when you install W2K you could select the larger partition as the installation partition. But I think that at that point you would have W2K installed on the D drive instead of the C drive.

FDISK will only make 1 primary partition. The rest of the partitions will be extended partitions. You will need PQMagic or a similar program to make more than one primary partition.

I also found this info using google: Enable USB It is supposed to be the info for your laptop to enable USB in the bios which should fix your booting from the usb cd-rom problem.
 
thanks kd7fhd... didn't see that on the sony site when i checked last. didn't work, though. there's no option for on there like that under the advanced tab.

i'll keep checking around for more solutions...
 
k, still didn't work...

i did the 2 partition thing. partition 1 (c🙂 the larger one and partition 2 (d🙂 being the bootable, active partition w/ the Win2K files on it. when i power up, i get "cannot locate operating system" or something like that.

did i setup the partition correctly, w/ C: being the non bootable, non-active partion?

i'm thinking i'm going to need to locate a pcmcia cdrom and see if that boots up.

any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
Nope, you did it properly. DOS will only boot from the C drive. That's why I said you would end up having Windows installed on the D drive.

I am still thinking that your problem is that you are partitioning the hd on another machine because no matter what fdisk is telling you you can only have one active partiton at a time. So if you already have a hd installed with a bootable os, the second (laptop) hd can be made a primary partition but cannot be set as active. When you then swap the laptop hd back to the laptop you DO NOT have a bootable hd.

You might try disconnecting all of the hd's in the desktop machine and have only the laptop hd installed wehn you fdisk and format it. You will need a boot floppy ( available here: Boot Disk ) with CD ROM support to make the hd bootable and to transfer the i386 subdirectory to it again.

I have installed W2K (never try this with XP as XP is really unfriendly!) on one machine and then transferred the hd to another machine and used it successfully. I think that was the first thing you tried to do and it didn't work. The trick is that you boot into safe mode on the first boot and go into System Properties/Device Manager (located in the control panel) and delete ALL installed equipment. Do a normal boot on the next boot up and let it find all the installed equipment for this computer. Just make sure you have the i386 subdirectory located on that hd as you will need it!

I'm also not surprised that you couldn't get Win98 to recognize your USB devices. USB support in W98 at best, sucks. You could try installing Windows ME and then upgrading as ME does have USB support built in and works pretty good.

After that, I'm pretty much out of ideas. If you have a network card for the laptop you could install over a network. But you better bone up on DOS networking before you start!
 
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