Solved! How to put an OS on a vintage Sharp Actius MM10 sub-laptop computer that does not support USB Booting.

[iKokomo]

I have a vintage Sharp Actius MM10 (Windows XP) from 2003"ish". The hard drive died on this unit and I want to put an SSD in this unit.

The only problem is that this laptop (according to research) does not support USB booting (has 1 port) except to a specific CD drive. Since I don't have the drive, I was wondering how I can recover windows XP to this computer?
This is a sub-notebook, so there is no internal CD or FD.

Is there a way to "prepare" the hard drive with XP before putting it in the computer so that it will boot?

Fun Fact: This is the laptop that was thinner than the first Macbook Air that Steve Jobs mistakenly said was the thinnest ever. I would love to get this restored and running again. Everything else is working on this laptop.

 

[COLGeek]

Have you opened the system to determine the make/model of the 15GB HDD (tiny)? You are going to have trouble trying to use a SSD unless it is small and uses the same type of interface as the original HDD.

See here for more info: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/583544/sharp-actius-mm10-replacement-hard-drive/

 

[hang-the-9]

That laptop uses an ATA drive, there are very very few solid state drives using that interface. I think there may have been a few built but they are going to be hard to find I am guessing. It may be possible to start the setup of XP on another system with the drive, and before the first reboot, move it into the Sharp laptop. However you will of course need to get another laptop that can boot of a setup media with the same interface as that laptop.