Laptop Bootable Partition?

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adam1mc

New Member
Ok a customer gave me a laptop that didn't work. Apparently Microsoft had shut it off for piracy reasons, even though I don't know why cause there is a code on the bottom of the system. Anyway, the laptop is a slim machine that does not have a disk drive or cd drive. I have a ligitimate copy of Windows that I am trying to install but with no cd drive or disk drive, it seems to be a problem.

The bios does not have a boot from USB option so I can't install Windows from USB (although it does have boot from network option, I don't have the right equipment to do so). I attempted to remove the drive and stick it in a desktop. I started the install and at the first moment possible I shut off the desktop, reinstalled the laptop drive, completed the install and crossed my fingers. That didn't work either. The first step from the install is to detect the IDE controller. So unfortunately I can't install using another machine.

What do I do? Can I partition the drive into 2, make one of the partitions bootable, copy the install files onto the bootable partition and then install to the other partition? Is that possible?

Does anyone else have any other ideas? The laptop is a Dell Latitude C400 model number PP03L
 
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lynx6200

New Member
Im not postive on this, but without a floopy drive or something I dont know how its possible to get windows installed. If its a dell, its should most certainly come with at least a cd or disk drive. I would say try to get that from the customer, or maybe if somebody else has a similar laptop, u might be able to find a universal drive.
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
Hi do you have a floppy drive? If you do. You can install norton ghost on another machine. And make a boot disk with usb support. This is a bios work around. Then get yor hands on a USB cd rom external and install via that. The boot disk will have fdisk etc as you know for re formatting...

It should be possible to partition and install via the 2nd partition
 
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adam1mc

New Member
The machine has no disk drive. So that won't be possible. The customer has pretty much abandoned this laptop. My company repairs computers and he gave it to me over 6 months ago to retrieve the files. Once I did that he never wanted to pay me for the disk and he quit returning our calls. So 6 months later I'm trying to play with it.

I've been looking for someone for a couple of months now that has a similar laptop that I could either use the external CD drive or possibly just ghost their machine but I am not having any luck.

I'm out of ideas.... Is the bootable partition idea not valid?
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
can you get your hands on BORROW and external USB cd rom and floppy drive? or buy them cheap or second hand on ebay? If you can then you can make a bootable cdrom with USB support via a friends machine. Boot the floppy and load windows via the cdrom with usb.

You can install windows via a second partition but how are you going to format this and partition.. I am not sure that the laptops bios will accept if you format via a second machine.
 
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adam1mc

New Member
Ok well maybe... I have an IDE external controller. I can hook an IDE cd rom to my device and then the device hooks to a computer via USB. The laptop however doesn't have a boot to USB option. How would I make a bootable CD if the computer cant boot to USB?
 
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adam1mc

New Member
Didn't see the second part of your reply...
I have already formatted the drive several times over.
My plan was to hook the laptop drive to the desktop,
Use partition magic and create 2 partitions i.e. 1 and 2
Make partition 1 bootable and copy the WinXP setup files to that partition.

At this point I was HOPEING that the laptop would boot to the bootable partition, see the autorun setup files and be able to install to the 2 partition. I'm not sure that this would work though... It's just the only thing I can come up with.
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
You need a friend who has a copy of norton ghost on his machine then you can make a boot floppy with USB support! this should bypasses the need for bios usb boot support. Hook your floppy up via the IDE controller. boot the floppy swap the controller over to cd rom and boot via the cd rom.... maybe??

Also Read this http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...000112112190325

Or try hooking the laptops hard drive up to your computer partition the drive and format the partitions FAT 32 not NTFS. Then load the windows OS on to the second partition.
Windows 98 would be better than XP... Run the install os from the second partition. But you will still need a bootable floppy to access the drive via dos. So connect your floppy drive via the IDE controller and get a boot disk made by a friend boot the disk navigate to windows on the second partition and run the install via dos...
 
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adam1mc

New Member
well maybe that would work, I have Ghost, however disk drives aren't IDE therefore it won't hook up to my controller (which by the way was just an external USB harddrive. I removed the drive, which just left an empty bay)

I've already tried a bootable CD, hense the MS Windows CD, however because the BIOS won't boot to USB, I don't think my device is going to work at all....
 
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adam1mc

New Member
This is a really good system (1.8mhz, 1gb Ram) I'd REALLY like to get it up and running without spending any money. Surely there is a way to get an OS installed on this thing. Maybe if I could get it up and running I could update the BIOS with a newer version that has boot to USB option???????
 
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adam1mc

New Member
I'm a computer geek... I have lots of friends that know much more than me... none of them have ideas either... This sucks. What else could I do with this thing?
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
adam do you have messenger yahoo or msn is so my username is classic_house add me and we can chat about it... i have an idea..
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
Well i am no geek.... But how about this?

Go back many years... Norton navigator for dos or something like that..

Ok get a copy of dos... Full copy use this as your operating system with norton navigator...

First partition your drive via another computer in to 2 drives c .. d ... install dos on the c partition... and copy all windows files from the windows cd to the d partition boot into dos... and navigate via dos to the d partition and install windows ???? what do you think?

This should work with windows 98 but not xp...
 
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lynx6200

New Member
Just a thought, and I know you already kind of mentioned this with your desktop, but I would try taking out the hard drive and having it hooked up to another system, laptop or desktop, possibly via some external cable, and installing an OS on it that way. Thats all I can think of. Oh, one last thing, but can you get into DOS?
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
the system should boot up into dos once it is installed if in the bios boot first hard drive is selected... I have a headache now... LOL
 
Classic_house

Classic_house

New Member
I think that if you load a full install of dos and boot the hard drive. Then install windows from dos you should get it running. But i think that it would be better to Install windows 98 rather than xp. then upgrade to xp after you have everything working.
 
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