I recently was given a Dell Latitude C400 laptop. It does not have a internal cd rom bay. The laptop is password protected and I do not know the password. I have an external dvd/cdrw drive that I attached via the ethernet cable. I loaded it with the XP boot disk, but it seems that the drive is not being recognized. I tried fooling around with the bios and boot options but boot from USB isnt even an option. Any help on how I can get this thing to recognize the boot disk would be greatly appreciated.

Hi and welcome to D-A-L

has it got an O/S on at the moment?
who gave you the laptop, have they got the external drive and password?

Yes it does have an OS installed in it, XP Pro, and I have the XP recovery disk. I got the laptop from my job, unfortunately, the admin password, or any user passwords for that matter, is unknown. The original cd drive is also unavavailable. Perhaps this is why they were giving it away!

If the computer's BIOS does not have the option to boot from an USB drive then you will need an internal CD drive.

What do you mean by "The original cd drive is also unavavailable"?

Is it broken?

Is it not listed in the BIOS Boot Menu Options?

Is there a floppy drive?

There is no floppy drive either. When I referred to the original drive, I meant the external one that was at one time used with the laptop. How would I go about installing an internal drive on a laptop of this type, as there is no room or open bays available. Thanks for any help you can give, I really appreciate it.

Just from a brief search of the web you need to get the CD/floppy drive adapter:

Removable media drives are accommodated via an external bay that, although quite bulky, does accept Dell's C family modules, which will endear the C400 to corporate buyers who already support Latitudes. Our review unit came with a floppy drive and a 24X CD-ROM drive, but a variety of options are available, including DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives. The modular bay connects to the system unit via a short cable and a proprietary port on the left-hand side of the main system

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/...0000055,00.htm

Thank you Jephree, my only question is what makes the referred to drive any different than the external dvd cd/rw drive I currently have connected to the laptop via usb. Will the referred to drive be automatically recognized by the OS even before boot up is complete? Thank You

My reading is the connection is the point.

The Dell device is NOT USB.

The modular bay connects to the system unit via a short cable and a proprietary port on the left-hand side of the main system

That sounds like a parallel port or perhaps it is a custom Dell port.

Most (especially older) motherboards do not load USB drivers: the Operating System does.

The Dell port is apparently recognized by the BIOS.

You would need to find an external case and or adapter to match this port.

Perhaps your company still has such a case laying about?

Okay I understand now, Thank you for your help, it is much appreciated.

No problem. Thanks for the thanks! Let us know how it goes or if we can help further.