rebooting,cd drive broken,old laptop

[kumaran kaliyannan]

I can't load past the BIOS screen with my laptop, and i want to use the windows recovery disk to reformat my pc. But. my laptop's CD Drive is broken. Is it possible for me to use another computer's CD drive to somehow connect to my laptop's hard drive or something and use that to reformat me laptop? there is no usb drive option in boot. thanks

 

[drtweak]

1) How old is it? 2) Sometimes it won't show any USB boot options in the Bios or Boot menu unless there was something actually attached. 3) Only way to use a desktop CD/DVD rom drive on a laptop is with a USB adapter.

And what do you mean by can't load past Bios Screen? does it just freeze there or do you get some other kind of error?

 

[kumaran kaliyannan]

1) How old is it? 2) Sometimes it won't show any USB boot options in the Bios or Boot menu unless there was something actually attached. 3) Only way to use a desktop CD/DVD rom drive on a laptop is with a USB adapter.

And what do you mean by can't load past Bios Screen? does it just freeze there or do you get some other kind of error?

hi my laptop is compaq evo n400c old one. suddenly my cd drive was not reading any disk.so i tried to boot my laptop with windows xp pro service pack 3. i copied the new os to my usb flash drive and install it from my home screen. everything was fine for 15 mins.suddenly a error msg popped up said some files missing and setup is aborted. everytime i restart the setup is automatically restart same thing happening. Is there any way to rectify my problem and install new os. plz help

 

[drtweak]

Ah i see what you did. You just copied it to the USB drive and tried to do an Upgrade from the USB while you were running windows. Yea big no no.

So you saying you started the install. and then part way it failed. then it restarted and now when it restarts it just have a boot loop with installing windows XP correct?

 

[kumaran kaliyannan]

Ah i see what you did. You just copied it to the USB drive and tried to do an Upgrade from the USB while you were running windows. Yea big no no.

So you saying you started the install. and then part way it failed. then it restarted and now when it restarts it just have a boot loop with installing windows XP correct?

ah yes

http/i.imgur.com/TSVQHDz.jpg[/IMG][/img]

http/i.imgur.com/noaRkyu.jpg[/IMG][/img]

http/i.imgur.com/aRjJGQE.jpg[/IMG][/img]

http/i.imgur.com/sRV1115.jpg[/IMG][/img]

http/i.imgur.com/CS0yX49.jpg[/IMG][/img]


I think now you understand clearly, what kind of mess iam on [i dont know how to post the picture, so i gave you the links]

 

[drtweak]

Yea lol. Ok well is there any files of value on there or no? Also let me look this up. The reason why it is doing this though is because even though it started installing find while you were running windows, when you install off a USB drive it usually need special drivers to read the USB drive. So even though its plugged in windows doesn't have the drivers to access it. And at this point right now if the CD rom doesn't work and if you can't get it to boot from USB then your going to have to get a new CD Rom drive for it. IF we can get it to Boot from the USB I can point you to a tutorial on how to properly boot and install XP From a USB drive which you will have to setup on another PC though, otherwise only option is a new CD rom drive.

Unlesssss you can try using a USB CD Rom drive if you have one? That may work. A lot of there older laptops only support Network, Floppy, Hard Drive, and CD.DVD drive booting unfortunatly.

 

[kumaran kaliyannan]

Yea lol. Ok well is there any files of value on there or no? Also let me look this up. The reason why it is doing this though is because even though it started installing find while you were running windows, when you install off a USB drive it usually need special drivers to read the USB drive. So even though its plugged in windows doesn't have the drivers to access it. And at this point right now if the CD rom doesn't work and if you can't get it to boot from USB then your going to have to get a new CD Rom drive for it. IF we can get it to Boot from the USB I can point you to a tutorial on how to properly boot and install XP From a USB drive which you will have to setup on another PC though, otherwise only option is a new CD rom drive.

Unlesssss you can try using a USB CD Rom drive if you have one? That may work. A lot of there older laptops only support Network, Floppy, Hard Drive, and CD.DVD drive booting unfortunatly.

Thanks i am looking forward to buy external optical drive and let you know if i need help.

 

[goingorbit]

At last after several attempts I finally succeded in installing Windows XP in my old Vaio laptop that has no USB boot support, and broken cd drive.
I'm writing right now a detailed procedure in my blog:
http/gerbian.wordpress.com/

 

[drtweak]

Ah i see what you did there! Pretty smart. Never though about that before. Installing RMPrepUSB to the hard drive it self. I use RMPrepUSB for EVERYTHING and its a great program. But yea you gave me new insights for other installs.

 

[goingorbit]

I actually installed Plop Boot Manager in the master boot record using RMPrepUSB as "swiss knife", anything is done with QEMU within, in an emulated environment.
After that, you can also delete partitions, but the laptop will be able to boot from USB in anyway.
MBR will load USB drivers that are missing in BIOS.