Installing windows without bootable device?

[d3v]

Hi all, just had an old circa 2003 Toshiba Portege Tablet P3500 and it is very unique in that it does not allow booting from either USB flash drives OR even external optical drives. The only way of reinstalling Windows is to buy some obscure Toshiba-made external USB optical drive that costs something like £200..

My question is; is there any way to install windows on the hard drive outside of the laptop? I've tried formatting the drive in NTFS then dumping the contents of an Windows XP CD in to the root, then marking the partition as active however upon placing the hard drive back in the laptop and booting up was greeted to..

INF FILE TXTSETUP.SIF is corrupted or missing. Status 18

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Knightsman]

The only way I can think of, wouldnt allow you to use a toshiba recovery disk.

You would have to install a retail or OEM copy on to a machine, then make an image of the hard drive with Easeus (i use) or acronis, and choose to do a univeral restore.

But then again you have to be able to boot from a USB or CD....

 

[tankman1989]

If you can boot from a Toshiba USB optical drive I would think that there might be a newer model that might be compatible, even if there weren't any at the time the unit was made. I know some older BIOS's seemed to be picky about some of the USB devices they booted from. Heck even my 2 yr old system is moody when booting to USB devices and totally refuses some flash drives.

What about network booting (PXE)? Is that an option on this machine?

 

[smashedbotatos]

If it boots with PXE you can use my guide. It might take some tinkering to get XP in to MDT2012, but it can be done. I have done it myself.

 

[HFultzjr]

Hi all, just had an old circa 2003 Toshiba Portege Tablet P3500 and it is very unique in that it does not allow booting from either USB flash drives OR even external optical drives. The only way of reinstalling Windows is to buy some obscure Toshiba-made external USB optical drive that costs something like £200..

My question is; is there any way to install windows on the hard drive outside of the laptop? I've tried formatting the drive in NTFS then dumping the contents of an Windows XP CD in to the root, then marking the partition as active however upon placing the hard drive back in the laptop and booting up was greeted to..



Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Check out the following link. it might give some insight to what you are trying to do.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/578/windows-xp-installing-from-harddrive/

 

[Rob_NNCC]

I second seeing if it will boot from PXE. A PXE server is an INVALUABLE tool to have in any shop as well so it may be a bit of a time investment setting up, but I boot via network 4/5ths of the time. I hardly ever touch disks anymore in shop.

 

[FoolishTech]

If PXE wasn't available I'd do a fresh install on another old machine and clone the hdd to the toshiba's, then run FixIDE (on my website) just in case, and pop that sucker in and go.

Then again, maybe you can get something like Plop installed on the drive (is that do-able?), allowing it to boot to whatever device you have attached...

 

[Rob_NNCC]

Then again, maybe you can get something like Plop installed on the drive (is that do-able?), allowing it to boot to whatever device you have attached...

Thanks Nick for telling us about Plop!

 

[16k_zx81]

Slave it and deploy a universal image, made with Sysprep or similar. (I use sysprep and Paragon P2P)

Put it back into machine, boot, set the license key and activate.

Driverpacks.

Done.

 

[Altster]

I found some interesting reading at this website (regarding the very specific ROM drive that will work with this system- maybe!) Take a look and draw your own conclusions...

http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=7748

 

[d3v]

Slave it and deploy a universal image, made with Sysprep or similar. (I use sysprep and Paragon P2P)

Put it back into machine, boot, set the license key and activate.

Driverpacks.

Done.

Had a look at all suggestions here and this definitely comes out on top in terms of simplicity, so will be doing this in the next day or so, luckily no rush as customer doesn't need it back until weekend.
Will conclude the thread in due course, thanks again guys you never fail to deliver to goods

 

[d3v]

Hi guys I just installed Windows XP with the new hard drive inside my own laptop, then put it straight in to the customers laptop but it just hangs forever on the black screen just before the Windows XP loading logo appears. Any idea why, and how to fix it?