Installing OS on a laptop without CD-Rom, Floppy Disk or USB boot

[cyber_outlet]

I have got a laptop which was perfectly running fine until its cd-rom gave up. I tried to search it on the net but couldnt find its replacement and even tried its original company but they dont have it anymore.

I formatted the harddisk but now I am stuck without an OS on it.

Tried to boot from external CD rom but the bios doesnt support usb boot.

Any suggestions.

[norman22]

does it have a floppy drive? you could boot to dos and load generic usb drivers for your cd rom.

[cyber_outlet]

No, it doesnt have a floppy drive. All it had was a cdrom, which now doesnt work at all.

[dasteph]

if you do a search on another pc and find how you can load a o/s from a usb drive this may solve your problem of loading your o/s onto your pc.

[cyber_outlet]

Yes, I tried loading the OS using the usb, but the main problem is that the BIOS doesnt recognise any usb so it basically cant read any usb, including external CD-rom connected with usb.

[Canker_Canison]

Remove the HDD & plug it into another PC.

Copy the contents of the OS cd onto the drive & see if it will auto boot the installation from the HDD.

You might need to add a DOS boot just incase it doesn't auto boot the installation

[BeianM]

Have you looked at how to do a remote install over lan

[ManofScience]

there's ways to map USB devices frokm DOS ( see here : Bootdisk.Com - DOS USB Drivers ) but you'd need a USB floppy and CDROM connected at the same time AND it's quite tricky to get the DOS script right.

Easiest/quickest way is to copy the contents of the i386 folder (if it's XP for example) plus a few other bits onto the hard disk when it's connected to a different PC. If it's a SATA hard disk ( which i bet it isn't) then it's IDE in which case you'll need a little adapter to connect it to a PC's IDE controller.

[paper]

there's ways to map USB devices frokm DOS ( see here : Bootdisk.Com - DOS USB Drivers ) but you'd need a USB floppy and CDROM connected at the same time AND it's quite tricky to get the DOS script right.

Easiest/quickest way is to copy the contents of the i386 folder (if it's XP for example) plus a few other bits onto the hard disk when it's connected to a different PC. If it's a SATA hard disk ( which i bet it isn't) then it's IDE in which case you'll need a little adapter to connect it to a PC's IDE controller.

ManofScience has the solution I would say, I have installed a few PC's using the i386 copy'd onto the hard disk.

Adapter kits are available on Ebay etc to allow you to plug the laptop hard disk into a 2nd machine.

Once you have the hard disk attached to another PC format the drive as FAT32
Copy the i386 folder to C:\
Boot from a dos floppy disk
Go into C:\i386 folder on C: and type winnt.exe to launch the setup from the hard drive.

Hope that helps

Paper

[ManofScience]

nice one paper, i knew the theory - just not the actual commands!

[Canker_Canison]

Except he can't boot from a floppy as he doesn't have one.

Put the HDD in a caddy, format to fat32 & add a small partition & make it bootable with the windows disk iso. WinSetupFromUSB should be able to do this.

Put the drive back into the lappy & turn it on. It should boot up the win setup files & allow the installation on the larger partition. Once installed format the small partition.

[bgd_ct]

take out your hdd and plug it in another pc
start the win setup (format as ntfs for winxp) and begin the installation on your hdd
after win finishes to copy all the data , when you see the message "win will restart in 10....9...." you shut down the unit
put back your hdd in the laptop an power on, and it should start the setup with the files allready copied

sorry for my bad english

[caveman_nige]

try this

Install Windows XP on a Mini-Note (USB stick method)