Boot sector question to install without CD, floppy or USB

[greymat]

I have an older laptop with no CD drive and which cannot boot from
USB. It used to have an external floppy, but this doesn't work any
more. I have an external enclosure to take the hard drive out an
manipulate it from another computer, but I have no computer with a
floppy. I created a small FAT32 partition on the beginning of the
disk, and copied Win98 boot disk files to it, as well as WinXP
installation files, with the intention of booting this partition, and
installing win XP once the win98 command prompt loaded. I set this
partition as active, but it didn't boot.

I'm assuming it didn't boot because I did not copy a boot sector. So I
have 2 questions: 1) would the boot sector from a win98 boot floppy be
appropriate for a 512MB hard drive partition? 2) If not, what
bootsector should I use? 3) Where can I get any of the above
bootsectors? As I mentioned I don't have a computer with a floppy, and
all the boot floppy images I can find will only unpack to a floppy
drive (I tried allocatin

 

[Andrew E.]

A new floppy drive sells for about 17.00,go to a good pc shop & they'll
either
give you a used one free,or expect to pay about 5.00,goodwill sells em for
3.00.
Any of these also have used cdrom/cdrw & used dvd players for about 10.00 or
less.....Check the mfg date for a newer one.

 

[greymat]

  A new floppy drive sells for about 17.00,go to a good pc shop & they'll
either
 give you a used one free,or expect to pay about 5.00,goodwill sells emfor
3.00.
 Any of these also have used cdrom/cdrw & used dvd players for about 10..00 or
 less.....Check the mfg date for a newer one.

Thanks for your suggestions, but I should clarify - this laptop has no
floppy or cd bay - the floppy was external with a proprietary IBM
cable and interface, and any external CD ROM would be USB, and
therefore not bootable with this motherboard. So I"m back with the
HD, and still looking for an appropriate bootsector, I'm afraid.

 

[John John - MVP]

I have an older laptop with no CD drive and which cannot boot from
USB. It used to have an external floppy, but this doesn't work any
more. I have an external enclosure to take the hard drive out an
manipulate it from another computer, but I have no computer with a
floppy. I created a small FAT32 partition on the beginning of the
disk, and copied Win98 boot disk files to it, as well as WinXP
installation files, with the intention of booting this partition, and
installing win XP once the win98 command prompt loaded. I set this
partition as active, but it didn't boot.

I'm assuming it didn't boot because I did not copy a boot sector. So I
have 2 questions: 1) would the boot sector from a win98 boot floppy be
appropriate for a 512MB hard drive partition? 2) If not, what
bootsector should I use? 3) Where can I get any of the above
bootsectors? As I mentioned I don't have a computer with a floppy, and
all the boot floppy images I can find will only unpack to a floppy
drive (I tried allocatin

Get yourself a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter and mount the hard drive in your
desktop and then find a Windows 98 boot cd like the one here:
http://www.bootdisks.us/windows-98/13/windows-98-bootable-cd-images.html
(I haven't tried these CDs but according to others it seems like they
work fine) and use it to prepare the disk. If you want to do without
the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and if you have a spare 3.5" hard drive you can
just prepare a partition on the 3.5" disk and then use a sector by
sector copy utility and copy (clone) the partition on the 3.5" disk to
the 2.5" disk.

John