Install Win2K Adv Svr no floppy drive

[John Wright]

I recently purchased a new Dell 2400 Dimension desktop that came with
Windows XP installed on it. I would like to install Windows Advanced
Server 2000 on this machine. However, my bad, I got the computer
without a floppy drive in it. So I can't get a boot disk to run on
the machine for the set up.

I do have a Dell floppy external drive that can plug into LPT1 used
for laptops. I also have a 128MB memory stick with a USB connection.
The machine has a CD drive and a DVD drive. There is 1GB of memory on
the machine and 120GB of hard drive space.

I'm a programmer not a hardware or OS person. Does anyone know how I
could leverage my resources and actually get Windows 2000 Adv Server
installed on this machine? I've tried booting to the CD, floppy and
Memory Stick. None of them have helped. Apparently I can't get the
machine to recognize the floppy drive. I burned a CD with all the 4
boot disks on it trying to fool the system and boot to the CD, no
workie. I also put all the boot disk contents on my memory stick and
tried to boot to it, no workie as well. Maybe I'm missing the
obvious, or maybe this is really not possible. There has to be a guru
out there that can get me out of this mess.

Regards,

John Wright
FooBared in Texas

 

[Guest]

---- OPTION 1 ----

If the CD or DVD drive is a "bootable" drive; boot from the Windows 2000 Adv Server CD.
You may need to change the boot order in the BIOS so the CD drive is read before the hard drive.
Usually the read order upon startup is:
1. Floppy drive(if installed)
2. Hard drive
3. CD-ROM drive

---- OPTION 2 ----

Run from the already installed OS, Windows XP.
From within Windows go to the I386 folder in the W2K installation CD and run the WINNT32.EXE command.

This is not an upgrade (downgrade in your case),
it will be a full install if you want it to be.
During setup, you can choose to format the hard drive and start clean.

 

[Leonard Severt [MSFT]]

(e-mail address removed) (John Wright) wrote in

I recently purchased a new Dell 2400 Dimension desktop that came with
Windows XP installed on it. I would like to install Windows Advanced
Server 2000 on this machine. However, my bad, I got the computer
without a floppy drive in it. So I can't get a boot disk to run on
the machine for the set up.

I do have a Dell floppy external drive that can plug into LPT1 used
for laptops. I also have a 128MB memory stick with a USB connection.
The machine has a CD drive and a DVD drive. There is 1GB of memory on
the machine and 120GB of hard drive space.

I'm a programmer not a hardware or OS person. Does anyone know how I
could leverage my resources and actually get Windows 2000 Adv Server
installed on this machine? I've tried booting to the CD, floppy and
Memory Stick. None of them have helped. Apparently I can't get the
machine to recognize the floppy drive. I burned a CD with all the 4
boot disks on it trying to fool the system and boot to the CD, no
workie. I also put all the boot disk contents on my memory stick and
tried to boot to it, no workie as well. Maybe I'm missing the
obvious, or maybe this is really not possible. There has to be a guru
out there that can get me out of this mess.

Regards,

John Wright
FooBared in Texas

You don't need a floppy to install Windows 2000 unless you need to load
SCSI drivers. All you nned to do is configure BIOS to boot from CD, then
press any key when prompted at bootup. Set 2000 setup program will step
you through the install.

Leonard Severt

Windows 2000 Server Setup Team

 

[Vince]

I'm a programmer not a hardware or OS person. Does anyone know how I
could leverage my resources and actually get Windows 2000 Adv Server
installed on this machine? I've tried booting to the CD, floppy and
Memory Stick. None of them have helped.

What happened when you boot into CD? Is that the bootable win2k installation
CD? If it is, it contains all the files on the 4 boot disks and it is loaded
much faster than from the floppy. Even if I have floppy drive, I never use
it for installation because I can't stand the long time it takes for all the
4 disk and the noise it makes. You really don't need a floppy drive to
install win2k.

Good luck

Vince

 

[Tari]

The part of this letter that caught my eye is the same
problem I'm having with Windows 2000. It won't recognize
my floppy drive. I haven't had a burner all that long and
no one told me that I really needed to burn all my (tons
of) floppies onto CDs before I went from 98 to 2k so I
haven't done that.

The weird thing is that on my friend's computer, which is
running XP, I can access these floppies just fine. I hope
someone out there can help me with this as I'd really hate
to lose all those pictures and other info I have on floppy
disks! (I use a Mavica digi plus floppies are cheap, lol.)
Thanks in advance!

Tari

-----Original Message-----

<Apparently I can't get the machine to recognize the
floppy drive.>