Installing windows without CD drive or floppy?

perc · 2 Feb 2008 at 09:00

Hi I have an older laptop and have want to upgrade the hard drive. However it does not have a floppy drive or CD Rom on the laptop.

I was going to make two partitions on the hard drive and make an image of my windows xp CD onto a small partition and then get that to install in onto the larger one.

What my problem is can I make the small partition bootable to allow the windows installation?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.....

MeatLoaf · 2 Feb 2008 at 09:05

Not sure if what you want to do is possible, but if you have access to a USB CDROM then you can certainly install from that assuming the laptop allows booting from USB

perc · 2 Feb 2008 at 09:18

Have tried using a USB stick with just windows files on it but does not seem to like that - does this indicate that it will not on a USB CD aswell?

swinnie · 2 Feb 2008 at 10:05

To make a USB Flash Drive bootable you will need to format it using a special tool. I recently read something that suggested the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.

Try this: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=HP+USB+Disk+Storage+Format+TOol&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

BigBoy · 2 Feb 2008 at 10:15

^^ thats the way i do it