help asap

S

sethanie

New Member
hey im new to this forum and i need a little help asap. i am a student and do a lot of autocad. as a gift i recieved a used laptop... a compaq presario 900. i was hoping to reformat the harddrive on it using the istallation disk that i got with it. unfourtunately, the cd/dvd drive is dead and im am not sure as to what to do next. i was wondering if there is any way of going about formating the harddrive and reinstalling windowns xp on it, using other means such as a usb drive or over a network. any and all help would be GREATLY appreciated.
-seth-
 
im not sure if thats possible ive heard that you can only use the compaq cd drives with the compaq laptops. if i were to use an external drive, would i be able to boot off of it because it will be connected as a usb as opposed to thorugh the computer itself?
 
Some gift :P Hehe... Older Compaqs have been known for their incompatibility with other hardware. I don't know for sure about that model, but it wouldn't surprise me if it'd be hard to replace. You could search around on ebay for a similar model...

Also, if you removed the hard drive, you could stick it in another computer, then make a partition with the windows install files. From there you'll probably have to boot to some disk then direct it to that partition.

An external CD-ROM is another option, but many computers don't like USB devices outside of Windows. My guess is it'd be much more trouble than it's worth to get the drive working.
 
Well I was thinking about getting some new guy a brand new Alienware desktop, but hay, its the thought that counts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top