Can't format new laptop hard drive with Windows XP without a CD dr

[Guest]

I recently purchased a 40GB replacement hard drive (336989-001) for a Compaq
Presario 17XL260 notebook from www.impactcomputers.com, but I am having
trouble installing Windows XP onto it. The laptop has no DVD drive, no CD
drive, no Ethernet NIC. All that it has is a 1.44MB floppy disk drive, 2 USB
ports, a parallel printer port, and a Type II PC Card slot. I have a 2.5 USB
enclosure for 9.5mm laptop hard drives, and I have several other computers at
my disposal, too. Using the other computers, I tried partitioning the hard
drive into 2 FAT32 partitions, and then I copied the entire Windows XP
Professional with Service Pack 2 installation CD onto 1 of the partitions. I
also have the 6 floppy boot disks for Windows XP Professional with Service
Pack 2, the 1 Windows 98 floppy boot disk, and Disk Manager 2000 version
9.53. However, no matter what I do, I cannot get the installation to launch
from the partition. When I boot with the Windows 98 disk, I cannot even get
to the 2 partitions. It just keeps saying that the drives are not ready.
When I boot with the Windows XP disks, I can see both partitions but I cannot
change the current directory or launch the setup.exe file. It just keeps
saying "Access Denied". Help! Is there anyway to do this without a CD drive?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I recently purchased a 40GB replacement hard drive (336989-001) for
a Compaq Presario 17XL260 notebook from www.impactcomputers.com,
but I am having trouble installing Windows XP onto it. The laptop
has no DVD drive, no CD drive, no Ethernet NIC. All that it has is
a 1.44MB floppy disk drive, 2 USB ports, a parallel printer port,
and a Type II PC Card slot. I have a 2.5 USB enclosure for 9.5mm
laptop hard drives, and I have several other computers at my
disposal, too. Using the other computers, I tried partitioning the
hard drive into 2 FAT32 partitions, and then I copied the entire
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installation CD onto 1
of the partitions. I also have the 6 floppy boot disks for Windows
XP Professional with Service Pack 2, the 1 Windows 98 floppy boot
disk, and Disk Manager 2000 version
9.53. However, no matter what I do, I cannot get the installation
to launch from the partition. When I boot with the Windows 98
disk, I cannot even get to the 2 partitions. It just keeps saying
that the drives are not ready. When I boot with the Windows XP
disks, I can see both partitions but I cannot change the current
directory or launch the setup.exe file. It just keeps saying
"Access Denied". Help! Is there anyway to do this without a CD
drive?

Use a Windows 98 Boot diskette from www.bootdisk.com to format and SYS the
hard drive (one large partition.)
You should then be able to boot from that partition - try it before
continuing - although it will only be a simple DOS boot.

Then - using whatever means you did before - create a directory on the
computer called "setup" and copy the contents of a Windows XP Setup CD into
that directory.

Boot from the partition, CD into the directory and start your setup from
there.

 

[Guest]

That's pretty much what I did, and I couldn't get anything to run. The first
time around, I formatted the entire drive as NTFS with the system files, and
I copied the entire Windows XP setup CD onto it as well. However, if I
remember correctly, it would not boot up on its own so I had to use the 6
Windows XP boot floppy disks that I downloaded from Microsoft. When I tried
to CD into the folder where I had all of the Windows XP setup files, I got an
"access denied" error message.

The second time around, I formatted the drive as two FAT32 partitions
without the system files on either partition, and then I copied the entire
Windows XP setup CD onto 1 of the partitions. I have a PC running Windows 98
SE so I made a boot floppy disk from it. However, when I booted the laptop
with this CD, I could not access either partition. I just kept getting
messages saying that the drive was not ready. Prior to reinstalling the hard
drive, I obviously was able to read and write to both partitions from the
Windows 98 SE PC using the external USB enclosure. The Windows 98 boot
floppy even comes with a SYS command in order to copy the system files from
the floppy to another drive, but that wouldn't work either. Once again, it
just kept saying that the target drive wasn't ready. When I tried to then
boot up using the 6 Windows XP floppy disks, I could see both partitions and
even the root files. However, when I tried to CD into a folder, I would get
an "access denied" error message. The same thing would happen if I tried to
run the SETUP.EXE file that was now sitting at the root of the partition.

I'm thinking that maybe not having the system files the second time around
might have been part of the problem, but I did have them the first time
around, and I couldn't get it to work then either. Originally, I just wanted
1 partition in order to get the most space out of the drive, but then I
started thinking that maybe there would be no way of running the Windows XP
setup without reformatting the target partition. That is why I created 2
partitions so that I could format and install Windows XP into the other
partition where the setup files were not located.

Do the system files make the drive bootable on its own? I mean, will the
laptop boot using just these files and no floppy disks, and then I should be
able to run DOS commands? Should I put the system files on both partitions
or just one? If I only put them on 1 partition, will the BIOS check each
partition looking for the system files and then boot from the partition where
it finds them, or does it only check the first partition, or is there a way
to tell it which partition to check?

I'm wondering if I bailed out too early the first time, and the laptop would
have booted up on its own without using any of the floppy disks. Maybe I
didn't wait long enough and started trying the floppy disks too soon. I
didn't realize early on that the BIOS had the "show diagnostics during
boot-up" option turned off so that all that I saw once I powered on the
laptop was the blank Compaq screen. It wasn't until later on in the day when
I hit the <ESC> key that I realized that it was, at times, really trying to
boot up. I tried so many things that it's all starting to become a blur.
Any more help that you could give me would be greatly appreciated.