XP install help..

blastman

blastman

blastman

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Hey all,

I've got an old laptop that I need to do a fresh install of XP on as I'm going to give it a new user.

I have a few problems...

The cd drive on the laptop doesn't work. It won't read any discs. The laptop is well out of warranty so no chance of getting it fixed.

The manufacture has also stopped producing the cd drives for the model, so no hope of replacing it.

I've tried copying the contents of the recovery cd to a USB key and changed the BIOS boot options to boot from 'removable media' but this hasn't worked. The laptop just loads windows from the HDD instead.

I've also tried copying our VLK install disc to the USB drive but I get the same results.

Any ideas on how to install XP????

I was thinking of formatting the c: drive (only one partion on HDD) and then copying the contents of the recovery disc to the newly formatted drive, but I'm not sure that will work.


Cheers in advance

:confused:
 
sadly I don't have one.

does anyone know where I can download a 'to DOS' bootable floppy??

I'll copy it to the USB key and see if I have any chance!!
 
turns out, the drive just won't read cd's but read's dvd's fine.

I'm currently in the process of copying the data from the recovery cd to a bootable dvd.

fingers crossed.....
 
right,

I've burnt the recovery cd to a dvd and made it bootble.

I've managed to boot to it and it's given me a command prompt at the A: drive.

A quick 'dir' shows that the A: has thing that you'd expect to see on a bootable floppy. I'm guessing that the recovery dvd has created a virtual floppy drive and loaded a dos bootable floppy disk.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

what the h**l do I do now???!!??

If I try to format the only drive C: it tells me 'Invaild drive, or format not supported' (format C:)

If I try to start winnt.exe it tells me it can't create a swap file.

Any ideas???

Cheers again!
 
are windows set up files on the disk?
no option to start setup from dvd?
you shouldn't need to format, Windows setup does it for you
 
if i try to run the setup thats on the dvd (all xp files are there, including the i386 folder) it tell me that it can't be lunched in DOS mode.

????
 
not to worry, I found a brower.exe hidden in one of the folders on the dvd. it won;t run from dos so i boot back to XP and it started a auto recovery suit.

NICE!! :)

cheers for your help guys.

:)
 
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