Installing XP with out cd-rom or network boot

[hotboy251]

hi i have an older dell laptop Latitude C510/C610 the cd rom has stopped working and ive tried network boot never got it to work is there any other solution to get xp on the hard drive Ive even tried cloning a fresh install on another laptop and all it does is hangs on boot any ideas im fresh out thanks

 

[chrisaroz]

Can it boot from USB? This says it's for Windows 7, but maybe it'll work for others...
http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool

 

[hotboy251]

im sorry no it doesnt have the option to boot from usb

 

[Xander]

Replace the broken CDrom drive?

 

[hotboy251]

yea its only 20$USD just trying to cut corners

 

[vdub12]

I think the new ubcd4win has a way to start the windows installation process. I haven't played with it yet but there was something about it in the plugin configuration.

 

[i.t-works]

I've had sucess from following the guide here:
http://www.benstoneonline.com/blog/2008/05/05/installing-xpserver-2003-without-using-a-cd-drive/

 

[atlanticjim]

yea its only 20$USD just trying to cut corners

I think that you should spring for the $20.

You have probably spent more than that on the time thinking about it and posting to the forums.

Time=Money.

(but another thought, USB cd rom, the bios may recognize it although it does not have a specific "boot from usb" option.)

 

[Hercomputers]

$20 is very cheap for a CD-Rom drive.

Or you should have an external CD-Rom drive in your arsenal for this very reason. An external drive also comes in handy when you have a customer that has laptop or netbook that doesn't have an external CD drive and you need something to boot off of. It's worth the investment and it will pay for itself from your next job.

 

[Crgky127]

You can slave the drive to a working machine, and put on the needed XP CD files. Also, either make a DOS floppy, or install DOS to the HD. Just google 'install xp from hard drive' or 'install xp from hard drive without floppy'.

But if you need to run memtest or something one day, you will wish you just replaced the CD drive.

 

[Xander]

$20 is very cheap for a CD-Rom drive.

Or you should have an external CD-Rom drive in your arsenal for this very reason. An external drive also comes in handy when you have a customer that has laptop or netbook that doesn't have an external CD drive and you need something to boot off of. It's worth the investment and it will pay for itself from your next job.

He'd said USB wasn't an option but...
If one is doing work in-shop, a tech should have at least a couple of working junker CD drives that you could throw into any system for troubleshooting purposes. Pop one into the system, do your install and, circumstantially, replace the old drive altogether.

 

[tackify]

Once upon a time what seems like long, long ago...

I had the same situation with a laptop running Windows 98.

What I did to reinstall 98 without a working cd rom or a bios that would boot from usb was:

-Used Partition Magic to shrink the Windows 98 partition by about 3 GB and make a new partition in the new space.

-on a different PC, copied the Windows 98 install disk files to a thumb drive

-put the thumb drive in the laptop and copied the 98 install files into the new partition.

-booted the laptop to a dos prompt, cd'd to the new partition and ran setup.exe from there

(...at least I think that's how I did it, 'twas a long time ago)