XP Instalation

[Martin]

Hi Guys

I've a little problem here, I appreciate any help offered.

My laptop has died (total disk failure) and the CD-ROM drive has been
broken for a couple of years and I'm reluctant to spend $300 on a new
<insert name> CD-ROM drive. So here is my problem...

Is it possible to format and get a basic o/s onto a hard-drive
sufficiently for it to boot so I can manually run XP-Pro 'setup' from
the equivalent of a DOS Prompt? I'm sure in the bad/good old days I did
this kind of thing with Windows 95/98, but the only systems I have now
are XP-Pro and I can't find a way to format the HDD (in a caddy) with /S
and get a basic o/s loaded.

Oh, as is the case these days, the laptop doesn't have an FDD either.

Cheers

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Martin

It seems to me that you need to get yourself a decent laptop.. with no
floppy, CD drive or hard drive, you don't have a laptop..

 

[Martin]

Martin

It seems to me that you need to get yourself a decent laptop.. with no
floppy, CD drive or hard drive, you don't have a laptop..

Thanks for your helpful response lol

I know you're right, I'm a bit stoney at the moment and was hoping I
could get a new o/s installed somehow on a spare drive I happened to
have lying around. It'll be about 6 months before I can afford to get me
a new one

The laptop is a Sony Vaio and worked well for Office, Web, even video
editting. I object to paying Sony $300 for their weird CD-ROM interface
when I know they only cost $30! I can't even get BIOS to boot through
the network port

These modern systems are all well and good, but I think we've gone
backwards in some ways when you can't make a disk bootable like I could
in the days of DOS and recover anything. Ah well, back to the drawing
board. I'll carry on playing and post back if I can make anything work
/mumbles about putting DOS onto an old PC....drive caddy inside.....mmmm/

 

[NotMe]

You would have to put the drive in a W9* system for the format /s to work.
Or even install W9* on the drive, and copy the XP CD to the HDD before the
transfer, then
delete as much hardware as possible from device manager then transfer it to
the laptop.
W9* is more forgiving than XP about being moved from machine to machine.

But you can get laptops CHEAP nowdays. It might be worth the investment to
avoid the headache.

 

[Michael Stevens]

In

Thanks for your helpful response lol

I know you're right, I'm a bit stoney at the moment and was hoping I
could get a new o/s installed somehow on a spare drive I happened to
have lying around. It'll be about 6 months before I can afford to get
me a new one

The laptop is a Sony Vaio and worked well for Office, Web, even video
editting. I object to paying Sony $300 for their weird CD-ROM
interface when I know they only cost $30! I can't even get BIOS to
boot through the network port

These modern systems are all well and good, but I think we've gone
backwards in some ways when you can't make a disk bootable like I
could in the days of DOS and recover anything. Ah well, back to the
drawing board. I'll carry on playing and post back if I can make
anything work /mumbles about putting DOS onto an old PC....drive
caddy inside.....mmmm/

Check at eBay for the parts you need..
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
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[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

While I don't doubt that Sony never lose out on selling replacement parts
for their laptops, as long as you have the attitude that in reality
everything can be done for a tenth of the price claimed, you will always
have a broken laptop.. perhaps you should consider a desktop machine as they
are much cheaper to service..