jaylo said:
Guys
I have a laptop with a broken CD Drive. no floppy. and a dead hard
drive.
I bought a hard drive, a usb caddy.
Intention was to make it bootable ( format e: /s ) copy all of win2k
across and then throw it in the laptop and hit setup.
Problem is I can't create a bootable drive for it win2k doesen't have a
format /s ( system) option.
Is there a way around this?
help is really appreciated
jaylo
You are restricting your options a lot by having a laptop
without a floppy disk drive and a broken CD drive. If it
was my laptop then I would replace the CD drive. If
you prefer to create a lot of extra work for yourself, here
is how you can do it:
1. Connect the disk to your Win2000 PC.
2. Format the disk with FAT32 and make it active.
3. Copy the i386 folder from your Win2000 CD to an i386 folder on this disk.
4. Get a Win98 boot disk from
www.bootdisk.com.
5. Copy all files from this boot disk to the USB disk.
6. Change all references in x:\autoexec.bat and x:\config.sys from A: to C:.
7. Connect the disk to a Win98 PC.
8. Type this command from a DOS Prompt: sys X:
9. Install the disk in the laptop and reboot it.
10. Run these commands:
smartdrv
cd \i386
winnt
11. Convert drive C: to NTFS if you wish.
(In the above commands, X: denotes the USB drive letter)
If you don't have access to a Win98 PC then you can do this:
7. Buy a $5.00 adapter so that you can connect your laptop
disk directly to the secondary IDE ribbon cable of your
Win2000 PC. Warning: If you connect the disk back to
front to this adapter then you will fry the disk.
8. Reboot your PC with the downloaded Win98 boot disk.
9. Type this command: sys X:
10. Install the disk in the laptop and reboot it.
11. Run these commands:
smartdrv
cd \i386
winnt
12. Convert drive C: to NTFS if you wish.
(In the above commands, X: denotes the USB drive letter)
As I said, it's a lot of mucking around for not wanting to
replace a broken CD drive. And because of the complexity
of the method, there are several things that can go wrong.
