Cant get install boot from USB drive on old dell laptop what next?

[samjoy]

Hi, I have bought a Dell E4200 laptop where the drive was wiped so I have it with no operating system. I have created a USB boot disk with XP install on it via wintoflash. The Dell wont see the USB drive at all. USB boot direct from pre bios option tried, and bios set to USB boot first in BIOS. Run diagnostics from BIOS option and fine, tried setting hard drive to ATA from AHCI, tried hard drive disable SATA and nothing just boots to flashing curser on black screen after two lines of text.
Put USB in my XP desktop machine of similar age and that sees it.
USB was bought two months ago Sandisk 4gb?...tried another older one and still no go.
It had win7 on it which I dont have, will it see an external cd drive if I buy one from ebay to try and install from CD

Any ideas would be a great help....Thanks in advance.

 

[xwb]

Will it boot from a USB floppy drive? If it can, try Smart Boot Manager. It is a program which will let you boot from CD/DVD even.

 

[rclarke250]

Or you could download windows 7 and use the key one the laptop Link. Does this not a dvd drive, because specs say it comes with one.

 

[samjoy]

No DVD or floppy drive, worried there is a danger that it wont boot dvd or floppy removable if at the moment it wont see USB drive. Where should I get the download from windows 7 and how do I install if I have no means a the moment via USB?
many thanks

 

[rclarke250]

did the desktop computer boot from the usb stick? A lot of bioses will not "see" the usb drive, but it will still boot them, it depends on how it is set to enumerate the devices. newer computers will show name brand and model, and sometimes serial number of the usb device, older machines don't. sandisk don't make a good bootable usb drive, as they almost always have the sandisk front end manager on them, and even repartioning, or formatting won't remove it, there is a tool on sandisks website that will take it off, and this has to be done before trying to make a bootable drive with a sandisk unit. I'd spend the 25-35 usd to get an internal dvd drive, and install it. specs say it should have one. Oh, and ata to ahci has no bearing on usb devices, that is strictly for the internal sata controller.

 

[samjoy]

Sorry thought there was something strange here its a E6400 laptop not E4200 so no didk drive. My desktop of similar age saw the sandisk USB I am going to try a integral drive I have bought but did also try an older USB drive as well with no luck!

 

[rclarke250]

e6400 says it comes with a dvd drive also. dell, Newegg Couple of links showing the E6400.

Regardless, here is how you can get a stubborn machine to install windows 7 without usb or dvd. Link You can download the windows 7 version that corresponds to the COA on the laptop, from either place I linked in the article earlier, softpedia, or the microsoft partner digital river. This should also work for XP.

 

[goombawaho]

Would like to hear WHY if they have a DVD drive, they are trying to install via USB. Could it be broken? Otherwise, what logic?

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[samjoy]

Ah hah, despite trying a old usb drive and a new sandisk I bought, I bought a third new drive (integral 8g)and it likes this one so all done!....thanks all