installing operating system on laptop

[alteridemever]

Yeah, I have a laptop with no cd rom dive and also no floppy. I have hooked it up to my PC via IDE cable and I installed windows 2k on it there. Then when I put the hard drive into my laptop, it cannot boot and simply says "Operating system not found" or "Invalid System Disk: Replace and strike any key when ready." Any ideas on how I could get windows loaded and running on the laptop would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[browolf]

win2k doesnt like being moved from one computer to another.

and without a cdrom or fdd it's all a bit tricky.

check the bios that it's detecting the hardrive properly. and try win98 instead of w2k.

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[roamer1]

alteridemever,

you don't OWN an fdd or CDRom, or they are removable: such as PCMCIA/ USB?

How big is the hard drive?

 

[alteridemever]

roamer, I wish it weren't so, but, no, I do not own any CDRom that works with the laptop. And my hard drive is 6 gb.

 

[Jasen]

First, when you installed windows on that drive, was it the primary master? or did you put it on as a slave, or secondary? If it was not the primary master drive, then the installer did not install the boot manager into the MBR. This is why you get the "operating system not found" error.

A second way to try, would be to copy the i386 folder to this drive, then sys it from a win95/98 disk. Put it back into the laptop, it should boot to a dos prompt, then go into c:\i386 and run winnt.exe. ________
Remember, you're unique... just like everyone else.

 

[wolluf]

alteridemever

You've got problem without FD/CD. When you installed 2k on the laptop's hard drive, did you go into device manager and remove everything you could? This can improve 2k's attempt to load drivers for new hardware (ie, when you load in laptop).

A possible approach is this:-

Connect laptop's HD to other machine again.

Create a win98 boot sector on the disk (if other machine is running win9x, after creating a fat32 partition, type sys X:, where X: is laptop's drive - if not, boot other machine from 98 boot floppy (

http://www.bootdisk.com

if you haven't got one) and then type sys X: from command prompt. Once you've done this, copy the contents of win98 boot floppy to the drive.
Put smartdrive on the disk too (

http://www.broomeman.com/support/smartdrv.html)

- because I hear you need it to run 2k setup from dos.
Then copy the \i386 folder from 2k install cd to the hard drive. Now put drive back in laptop - it should boot to a dos prompt. Run smartdrv, and then run winnt.exe from \i386 folder. After you've installed 2k, you can remove \i386.

HTH

 

[alteridemever]

ok, I tried have done what you said to do, and tried to sys the drive. However, when I try to sys it I get the message "Cannot sys a network drive." any ideas would still be appreciated.

 

[alteridemever]

I manually copied the files that the sys program copies (io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com, & drvspace.bin) to the hard drive, and also the i386 folder, to the laptop's hard drive. However, I cannot get a command prompt when I boot it up, it simply says, "NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart." I cannot get around this. I would really appreciate any further help, I really could use it.

 

[wolluf]

Misunderstood - I thought you connected the laptop drive with an IDE cable - which would make it a local, not a network drive. Copying the files is no good - you need the sys utility. If it doesn't work, I don't suppose format x: /s would either (where x: is the laptop drive in the other machine) - that also writes a 98 boot sector.
You need the drive to be 'local' somewhere so you can write a boot sector to it (there may be another way to do this, but I don't know of it - only thing that comes to mind is creating a boot sector image file and using an image writing program to write this to the hard drive).
What sort of IDE cable is it? (I've got one (adapter) that allows laptop drives to be connected to PC motherboard as a local drive - cost me about £5 here in UK. You could buy one of those if yours is producing some other sort of connection).

 

[alteridemever]

yeah, it is simply a 2.5" adapter, which allows me to connect the laptop hd to the motherboard. I suppose it should be local then, but I am not sure what is going on.

 

[alteridemever]

ok, I got it to sys the drive, and I copied the i386 folder to it as well. however, when I tried to boot the laptop, it says "invalid system disk. replace and press any key when ready." I've got to say, I am really desperate now, in addition, I'm fairly upset with the laptop. I really need to get it fixed. I eagerly await any further help, which will be greatly appreciated. thanks.