Unusually difficult OS install

[cygor98]

So I have this pain in the butt system that I have been working on getting XP installed.

The system is a Fujitsu Lifebook B2620. It has no drives except the hard drive.

The main issue is that the system will not boot from an external USB opitcal drive. From my research it will only boot from a specific model or two of Fuji optical drives.

The only boot options are floppy, hard drive, and network.

I have successfully booted from a USB floppy drive to DOS with the correct USB and USB optical drive drivers.

I have also been able to run winnt.exe from DOS, but it loads the files to get the install going but it hangs after loading the initial files.

This is not the normal load screen for windows since its running from DOS.

I have more info but I don't want to overload the initial post. If you have any suggestions on how to get this to work it would be very helpful.

 

[Modelworks]

You can use a floppy disk with a usb loader.
It boots from the floppy disk then that code will boot an attached usb device. Works with almost any usb device so you can use other USB optical drives than what the laptop supports.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx...-bootable-floppy-disc/


If that doesn't work look at doing it via network
http://www.networkcert.net/xp/install.htm

 

[cygor98]

The first link is cool and it looks like a good path to take. The problem is the links in that article are broken. 🙁

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: cygor98
The first link is cool and it looks like a good path to take. The problem is the links in that article are broken. 🙁

http://support.microsoft.com/d...?scid=kb;en-us;Q310994

I think this is what you need.

 

[Binky]

Does a bootable USB (thumb) drive work?

 

[cygor98]

there is no USB boot option so i doubt it.
though faking it with a usb floppy emulator or something similar might work.