I have a laptop. It has no CD drive (long time broken) nor the ability to boot from USB drives due to BIOS limitation. I wanted to dual-boot Linux and Windows XP (or 2k) on the system. I took the HDD and placed in my desktop temporarily. The Linux install went okay and boots fine when put in the laptop. The Windows (both versions) did not. The install went fine and seemed like it would work, but when placed in the laptop, neither will boot past the "Starting Windows" portion where it is obviously loading the drivers required to boot the operating system. I attempted to boot into VGA and into Safe modes, but couldn't get any farther.

My question is: Is there a way to install the operating system from another computer and then put the drive in the laptop? Is there another way to accomplish this that I have overlooked?

Hi WaylandBill,

I don't think you'll find any help on this kind of problem in the Web Development Help section of the forum so I'm moving it to the Windows 2000 area for you

Ah, actually it seems that I'm not a moderator in this area so I can't move it. So I'll answer your question here and perhaps one of the other mods can move it for me.

You've already got on the right track for why Windows 2000 and XP won't boot when you move the hard disk back into the laptop - it's a driver issue. Unfortunately, it's more fundamental than just the graphics driver, though so booting into VGA mode won't get around it. When you do an install of Windows 2000 and XP, it sets itself up specifically for your motherboard. That's one of the reasons why 2000/XP are so much more stable than earlier versions. So you do need to install Windows on the laptop itself.

Fortunately, there is a way that you can do that ..... it's just a little fiddly. What you need to do is format the hard disk as FAT32 in the desktop PC. Then copy over the Windows 2000 or XP CD contents (or, at least, the i386 folder) into a new folder on the laptop's hard disk. Personally, I like to have a folder named "Install" on my hard disk and, within that, sub-folders for the Windows installation source files and the drivers required to set the system up so that I have everything that I need to be able to get it connected to the Internet. It's very hard, for example, to download modem or network card drivers from the Internet because you can't connect to the Internet if you've got no modem or network card drivers already installed. So it's best to make sure they're on the hard disk!

Second step is to get hold of a Windows 98 or Windows ME boot disk. You can download these from www.bootdisk.com (make sure that you run the setup program to create the disk - don't just copy the download onto a floppy).

Third, put the hard disk back into the laptop and boot it from the floppy disk. Once you get to the command prompt, browse to the Windows 2000 source files on the hard disk and run the setup program. I can't remember what that's called at the moment but it's either Setup.exe, Install.exe or Winnt.exe.

That should be it. Let us know how you get on