installing windows xp from an external cd rom

K

klevito

New Member
hi
i guess i have been screwing aound with my lap top and i am facing such a problem.
it has been a while since my laptops cd rom is not working.it also didnt come with a floppy disk.as a cheaper solution i bought an external cd rom to connect it through usb.before buying the external one my windows xp couldnt start.so i figured out myself that i buy an external cd rom.take out the hard disk and connect it to another pc to save the information and format it so i can reinstall again windows xp.and it seems like was not a good way coz i am stuck on the point of how to install windows xp and i only have an xternal cd rom an empty hard disk and another borrowed pc.when i tried it to boot from hard disk or cd rom is tells me NTLDR missing please restart

i would appreciate really any help on this
thanks in advance
 
Bigshow1030

Bigshow1030

New Member
boot disk

sounds to me like your harddrive is not formatted or partitioned....need a A: boot disk because in theory I think the computer has no idea what it really is :p
 
K

klevito

New Member
Thank you fro the reply but the fact is i dont have a floppy drive.is there any way to use the hard disk to replace the role of the startup disk?
 
Bigshow1030

Bigshow1030

New Member
hmmmmmm

Not that I know of.....more people on here would know more than I do though....I have always used a floppy, even if I didn't intend on leaving it in there
 
K

klevito

New Member
hi.thanks a lot for your help.still trying but i think i am on the right way now.just to let u know if u r intersted the solution someone else offered

Use another PC.
Go to www.bootdisk.com and get the file to make a boot-floppy for W98-SE. Create the floppy by running this program.
You can buy 2.5"-3.5" adapters. Take the laptop-hd out, connect it temporarily to this other PC as Master and disconnect any other HDs. Make 2 partitions on the Laptop HD, the first one of max. 30GB (and set it active). Format this in FAT32 using format C: /s /u, the second partition uses the rest of the HD, format also in FAT32. For both, use the W98 floppy.
Remove the floppy and try to boot that PC. It should boot into C:.
Now connect the original PC-HD back on, and make that laptop-HD the slave. Boot up.
Then copy the full contents of the XP-CD to the SECOND partition of the laptop-HD.

Take the laptop-HD out, set jumpers back to master and put it back in the laptop.
It should boot the laptop into C:. Then go to the laptop's second partition and start XP installation from there (setup.exe most likely). Let XP re-format the C-partition as NTFS. Keep the second partition with XP-files for when you need to (re-)install, and store your updates and other stuff there.

thanks again
 
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