Can't boot laptop to external floppy to erase and reinstall WinXP

[M Skabialka]

I have a laptop that I want to completely remove everything from and start
from scratch. I attached an external floppy to the parallel port but it
would not boot to the A: drive, even though this is the first boot device
listed. Because of security features I couldn't boot to a command prompt
when XP was still installed, but want to use a disk wipe utility to erase
the hard drive.

I have already put the drive into a USB adapter and formatted it from
another machine, in case there were policies not allowing me to get to the
floppy drive.

This is a Dell Latitude. What would make it not boot to the A: drive so I
can run the erase utility?

Thanks,
Mich

 

[Dave B.]

Been a while since I dealt with something that old, but IIRC, parallel port
floppy drives are not bootable.

 

[M Skabialka]

I tried to copy the contents of the floppy to a CD but it doesn't boot as it
does with a floppy, even though I believe I copied all files, including
hidden ones....
Is there a trick to this?

Mich

 

[Dave B.]

You can't just copy the files to a CD, you must use mastering software, such
as Nero, and tell it to create a bootable CD.

 

[M Skabialka]

Even though the boot OS is a non-Microsoft version of DOS?

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Even though the boot OS is a non-Microsoft version of DOS?

Yes. There's an issue of exactly where specific system files are
physically placed on the disk, and simple copying does not address this.
This is why the SYS command existed in DOS.

HTH
-pk