Starting Win XP setup under DOS using an external USB 2.0 CD-RW

C

Costa

This is my problem.
Recently my internal cd-rom on my laptop failed.
Instead of paying Dell ₤50 to get a new drive I instead
bought an external USB 2.0 CD-RW for ₤75.
I realised:
1)USB drives are not bootable and not recognizable
by DOS
2)Hence USB drives cannot be used to reinstall Win XP
in case this is necessary.
Now, as you can see this is a major inconvenience.
I found on the internet a nifty little utility
which enables USB drives to be recognized in DOS.
So far so good. Then I found out that in order to run Win
XP setup in dos I had to navigate to the I386 folder and
run winnt.exe.Nice.
I then realised I hadnt loaded smartdrv.So I did that too.
So, finally, I started the setup.All is good.I get the
message "The MS-DOS part of setup is complete. Press
enter to restart". After restart, system hangs while
displaying this "GRUB _". Probably Microsoft IS actually
using an open source boot-loader...
Does anyone have any idea as to how I could actually
finalize this damn installation. It seems that every step
in this process is riddled with difficulties which take
ages to overcome.
All help is welcome.
Cheers costa
 
C

Costa

ATTN: Mr. Byrne

I read your suggestion Mr. Byrne and tried it out.
It seems as if the MS-DOS setup of Win XP
does not install any kind of bootable files on the
disk and doesnt install anything in the MBR
so as to direct the computer to the location of an OS.
Copied I386, run winnt and then pressed enter to restart.
I get the exact same message, i.e."GRUB " altho I now
think this has to do with my BIOS and not windows.
I kinda think microsoft implemeted the DOS setup of XP
very poorly. Running out of ideas quick.
Anyway.
Any more suggestions again welcome
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top