No operating system

[Guest]

I have a laptop that had the hard drive reformatted. Now I have no operating
system. I tried installing Win Xp Home from a full installation disc but it
will not boot. Not sure if system recognizes the USB port where I have the CD
player attached. Any suggestions on how I do a complete install? Thanks

 

[Guest]

This is always a tricky one!

Take a look in the BIOS settings to see if there is an option to boot from
CD or USB.

Does the computer have a floppy drive?

If so, you can use a DOS bootdisk with CD support to launch the installer.

Just type:

lock (answer yes)
d: (Or the CD-drive letter, if different.)
cd\i386
winnt.exe

Bootdisks are available from http://www.bootdisk.com

 

[Guest]

The laptop does not have a floppy drive. I have the BIOS set to boot from CD,
but I'm not sure the USB drivers are present because the WIN CD doesn't boot
at startup? If the drivers are missing would it do me any good to get an
external USB floppy? Still stuck!

 

[JB]

nope

if your laptop does not have any drives, and your BIOS does not support
boot from USB you will need to boot from a network

IF you do not have a network, or you laptop doesn't support your NIC in
the BIOS, your gtoin to need to pull the Hard Drive, install it into a
new mechine, and copy the CD to a partitation, then reinstall and boot
from that partation.