Hi-

I have an older Laptop- I have a broken CD and no floppy- Also cant figure out how to use USB-

How would I re-install XP with out removing the hard drive?

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:-)

Removing the hard drive is not an option either. You must install on the motherboard that will run XP.

Replacing the CD drive is about your only option. I doubt that an older laptop has the ability to boot from a USB drive.

Is there a way to have a something that allows me to go to a dos prompt (like in win98) and then switch to D-Drive (slave). Then run a setup.exe installation file?

Seems like XP-pro would have this feature as Win98/95 had this option and for a while was a way faster way to install the system than using a CD.

Ideas?

Thanks!

You can boot XP floppies to get to the CD. This might work with the XP CD in a USB drive.

But you said you did not have a floppy drive?

How to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994


Unless you are saying that you previously copied your XP CD to the hard drive there would be no setup.exe on your hard drive.

You need the CD to install or repair XP.

Hi-

Well I have two other Laptops on the network at my home.

The other two computers have CD/DVD drives that work. So I can copy files, etc. to the laptop that needs to be re-installed.

So lets say I copy an entire CD or whatever to the laptop via network. Then what would be the steps including key commands?

Thanks in advance!!! I am very thankful for your help :-)

~matt~

I am now only speculating but I think your only chance here would be to copy an ISO image of your XP CD to a second partition on the target hard drive.

You would then need to try and boot that partition.


There is no DOS to run XP. Everything depends on that CD (or its' image) booting.

Do you have an idea of how this would be accomplished?

Do you have an idea of how this would be accomplished?

Like can I use DAEMON-Tools ??

Im a bit grey on the disk image part-

As far as I know when you reboot the computer the disk image running on an emulator like DAEon tools would not work at boot?

Or would all the files be copied to somewhere?

Please walk me thru this if you please :-)

Thanks!

I can try. First off insert your XP CD and hold the shift key for a few seconds until the CD icon stops blinking. This just stops any autostart features.

Then go to My Computer and right click your CD drive which should read something like: WXPCCP_EN( D: )

Then choose: Create image from CD.

If you do not have this option you need to download an ISO burning program. Here is a free one:

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm


Then as to the destination you would need a second partition on the target hard drive.


If there is not one then you will need to create one first.


Again this would require a boot CD so we are already in circles.


So before going further do you have multiple partitions on the target hard drive?

Hi-

Yes I have the single drive partioned into C-DRIVE and D-DRIVE-

Whats next :-)

Thanks!