Installing Windows without CD drive or bootable USB support.

Ali195

Ali195

Ali195

Associate
Joined
30 Sep 2008
Posts
2,074
Ok so a friend has given me an old Sony laptop (must be 10 years old because it has WinME on it).

It has no CD drive, BIOS/boot options are HDD, Optical (he lost the external CD drive & i dont have one) & Floppy (dont have a floppy disc).


So.....i have a 10GB HDD & Windows XP iso image.
 
Hmm, tricky.

Write a boot manager to the HDD in another system. Load a bootable app that can run the ISO directly from the HDD or just a command line environment into which you can have the extracted setup files available. CD into the setup folder and execute WINNT.

Or POSSIBLY:

Build XP onto a virtual machine with very very basic hardware specified. Image it to the 10GB HDD, put it in laptop and see if you can get it to boot. Not sure how the boot entries will look though. Never tried it to be honest, just a wild thought :D
 
Last edited:
Sin_Chase said:
Hmm, tricky.
Or POSSIBLY:

Build XP onto a virtual machine with very very basic hardware specified. Image it to the 10GB HDD, put it in laptop and see if you can get it to boot. Not sure how the boot entries will look though. Never tried it to be honest, just a wild thought :D
Click to expand...

The only problem with doing this will be the controller and the OP will more than likely run into a BSOD stop 0x0000007b/7d error message.
but give it a bash regardless.

No option for PXE boot in that bios?
 
No PXE in bios im afraid...super basic.

Now the simple way would create two partitions, one 700MB (give or take) & the remaining 9GB ish. Put the extracted XP installation in the 700MB part, boot off a Win98/2000 floppy then run the install from DOS...install to 9GB. But no floppy disc.

...must ...solve. Reminds me of my old college days.
 
Extracting is the best way indeed but without floppy yeah, why I suggested trying to write GRUB/others to the HDD so you can boot SOMETHING off it. Maybe install DOS or something to it from another system and do an inplace install?

As for the controller error, yup, possibility. But VMs usually use pretty generic drivers which hopefully might just work.
 
Interesting, i've never used grub before & always associated it with MAC's. The website is a little quirky. What exactly does it do? Does it create some kind of boot loader after POST/ahead of Windows?
 
"Write a boot manager to the HDD in another system. Load a bootable app that can run the ISO directly from the HDD or just a command line environment into which you can have the extracted setup files available. CD into the setup folder and execute WINNT."

I've done this before.. it works. You will need to be able to put a dos\windows boot sector and boot files on the disk.

1) Put the hard disk into another computer
2) Copy contents of XP cd to the hard disk
3) Download a boot floppy from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
4) Boot from floppy or cd image
5) Use "sys c:" to make the hard disk bootable
6) Put hard disk back in laptop
7) Boot from hard disk
8) Do "cd \xpcd\i386"
9) Do "winnt.exe"

..thats off the top of my head but have done similar before without issue

Good luck

EDIT - Personally I would put linux on it. Download a livecd and boot from it in another computer. Most distributions will run just fine when you move the disk to another pc. Old boxes like this would make a nice light web\email system. Something like lubuntu would be a good choice.
 
Last edited:
It's possible to format a usb stick with a virtual cd partition which will boot as if you have a cd, then auto launch the windows image on the storage part of the stick. I did this a while ago on an old netbook that had no cd rom and wouldn't boot from usb.
Then when you've finished run U3Uninstall to turn the stick back into a normal memory stick :)
 
And so it continues.....

So i borrowed a 8xDVD-ROM USB drive from work & guess what ....the mo fo BIOS doesnt like it. Simply ignores the drive apon boot. Select ATAPI CD-ROM on the boot menu....two blinks & boots off HDD. Disc tested fine on my PC ..booted off it fine using the same drive.


BUT i have a working CD drive in Windows, just not bootable. So ...i looked into the GRUB thing but i see all this talk of, boot off linix live CD.... stopped at that point.

Davefran, i had also had the idea of spoofing a CD-ROM drive but no hopes if it doesnt pickup the real thing.
 
Davefran said:
It's possible to format a usb stick with a virtual cd partition which will boot as if you have a cd, then auto launch the windows image on the storage part of the stick. I did this a while ago on an old netbook that had no cd rom and wouldn't boot from usb.
Then when you've finished run U3Uninstall to turn the stick back into a normal memory stick :)
Click to expand...

What program did you use to create a virtual cd partition?
 
Do you know for a fact that it will boot from USB?

EDIT - Thread title says you dont have bootable USB. I'm confused.

The way I see it. Network boot is out. USB boot is out. CD boot is out. You only option is to create a bootable partition on the hard disk. The only option to do that is to rip it out and put it into another PC. See my post earlier. Creating a virtual cd drive is a moot point because you will need to boot from the hard disk anyway and if you can do that then you can kick off the install without the need for a virtual cd.

EDIT 2 - from http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/files/map.htm#hd32

"there is no way (at present) to install Windows using Grub4dos ISO emulation"
 
Last edited:
Put the Hd into a PC that does have a CD

FDISK The HD and partition it ( as a SYSTEM disk by the way )

Now reboot and after you format the disk, we can start
Now make a folder, or a few folders so you can end up with

C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS

This is not vital how you do it, but that seems to be how all PCs that I have come across in the past had it.

you do this with the MD and CD commands

MD WINDOWS
MD WINDOWS\OPTIONS
MD WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS

CD WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS

Now all you need to do, is copy the CD Contents over to the HD

Depends on where the Files are and what Drive letter the CD is on, but first make sure that SMARTDRV is installed by typing SMARTDRV. You may need to be in a directory that has this file but it will speed up disk access 100 times faster ( Or whatever ? )

Anyway, I think the Win98 and WinME CD have their Windows files in the Win9x folder, so you probably need to type in something like

X: ( If the CD is X: )

CD WIN9X

You should see something like

X:\WIN9X:\>

If you do, then bino, you can now copy the files over

COPY *.* C: /V

I used C: and not C:\ because we are still in the C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS Folder in C: and thats where we want the files to go - If we added C:\ instead, then the files will be copied to the root and thats naughty boy smack bottom time.

The *.* means copy all the files and the /V is to VERIFY that they have indeed copied

We now have all the main files that we need to install Windows 98/Me onto the HD, already on the HD.

There are 2 other files that we really do need and these are CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT that might be on a VIRTUAL FLOPPY DRIVE... Have a look for them. We might get away without them, but if you can find them, then they have a few tricks in them.

They call on certain files for example the CD Driver and without them, we cannot use the CDROM.

They also setup certain memory parameters and again we really could do with these however, windows has ways to get around them.

Anyway, if you have these files then they need to be editted a little and both of them need to be copied into C:\

Lets forget that for now however.

Get the HD and put it back into the Laptop.

Now boot from it.

If everything has gone in as it should, you will have a black screen with a bit of writing in there and you will see

C:\> and the cursor will be flashing.

If you do then brilliant, if not, then erm... He did it, not me.

Anyway, type in

CD WINDOWS
CD OPTIONS
CD CABS
SMARTDRV
SETUP /NM

And let us know how you get on!!!!

This is a hugely edditted and quick few notes - If you want me to fully run you through, then I will be more than happy to.
 
Last edited:
First off, check for a BIOS update and whether it allows USB booting.

On your machine, download a DOS 6.22 floppy disk, and create either a USB or floppy disk. Now power the machine down and disconnect all drives.

Attach the laptop's harddrive (you'll probably need an adaptor) to your machine, boot off the newly created disk into DOS.

From DOS, run FDISK, delete all partitions and create a primary one, making sure it is active. Restart the machine into DOS again, run the command FORMAT C: /S - this will perform a full format, and copy the basic system files to allow the drive to boot into DOS with no drivers.

Now you just need to make a folder where you wish to copy the Windows setup files, put the harddrive back into the laptop, and it should boot into DOS allowing you to run Windows setup.
 
I also just realised that you said you have an XP ISO Image...

XP Wont go onto that Laptop.

If it dos, and you do somehjow manage o perform a miracle, it will be so slow, that it will be utterly useless.

Hence the option of 98 / Me being a better one.

But as 3dcandy says... Get a better one!
 
Hahahaha - don't wanna sound like I'm being harsh but I honestly see no reason to bother. A ten year old laptop won't run anything very well, and don't come with the bare install of linux cos I've tried and it runs like a dog
 
Oh I dont know...

I got a 486 DX25Mhz LapTop that I eventually managed to get Linux onto with I think blackbox so it had a fairly useable X on it. I also got it to talk to the interwebs and it wasnt half bad.

Wasnt half good either but it managed it.

Depending on the specs of the Laptop in question it might or it might not be worth chucking something onto it.

In all honesty, I think anything below say.. 500Mhz is going to be absoluetly useless to take seriously, but might be worth a giggle to get going.

Even saying 500Mhz, I am being extremely generous.
 
Tbh, get a new laptop

I bought a refurb netbook for £140, added 4gb of ram for £35 and it runs Windows 7 really well
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom