Installing Windows XP on Laptop with no CDROM or Floppy

[jammyo2k]

Having a few problems with a new laptop.

I've just come into the possesion of a rather splendid little Toshiba Portege with a PIII600 processor and 192Mb RAM. The only problem that it's tiny size means a lack of CD or floppy drives and also a lack of O/S. I don't have the toshiba cd drive or the dpcking station so I've been forced to improvise.

I've been trying to get XP on the system by using a 3.5" to 2.5" IDE adapter and copying over the setup files from the Win XP CD using my desktop machine and then returing the harddrive to the laptop. Sadly I've never been able to get very far into the installation without the laptop hanging (usually just before I get the option whether or not I want to format the drive). I made the drive bootable in the first instance using my handy Win98 boot floppy to format the drive as bootable (format c: /s).

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Or does anyone have an alternative solution?

These are the resources I have at my disposal:

laptop
Desktop
external SCSI CDROM on PCMCIA
2.5" to 3.5" adapter

If anyone has any ideas I'd be very grateful.

 

[edfair]

Probably would revert to DOS 6.22 (because I have it) on a FAT16 partition just large enough to hold the essentials and the XP install stuff. Make sure it is bootable on the desktop. Then install it and see if it boots. If so, then go to the install. And would probably make it dual boot with something like partition magic with the XP on the extended partition. This to give some hope of recovery when things go bump.
This is pure speculation however, since I've never done it on higher than SE.
And you would need all the hardware drivers on the DOS partition too.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[jammyo2k]

I may try that, but my DOS is a little shaky, especially when it comes tp laptops and PCMCIA devices.

Thanks for the suggestion, but are there any other options?

 

[linney]

Have a look at this site and see if you can adapt any of the ideas.

http://www.ids.org.au/~shaynest/articles/portege/install.html

307848 - HOW TO: Start Setup from MS-DOS in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307848&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[jammyo2k]

Thanks for the suggestions. Basically it will have to be installing DOS first (which ain't asy without a floppy drive) but I'll look into it.

I was pretty out of ideas so thanks.

 

[gazzanewpy]

Does it not have a network port or can you set it to PXE via PCMCIA? Do you have a 2000 server?

RIS will do it. If not then a remote CD drive can work (sometimes).

 

[jammyo2k]

There is no network port in the laptop, only a modem. I don't have windows 2000 server and I have no idea what the other idea even meant. I only have my Win XP desktop machine and the stuff I mentioned earlier. Thanks anyway though.

 

[wolluf]

format c: /s only loads minimal dos - if you then copy the contents of a win 98 boot floppy to the hard drive too, you get the extra bits an pieces (ie, like using a win98 boot flopy but on hard drive) - particularly better disk access I think (may need to tinker with autoexec.bat & config.sys too - I have done this but not for a long time!). So, your install might stand a better chance (alternatively find smartdrv - google).

Or you could chance installing XP on the drive in the desktop (with as much hardware disconnected as possible), then see if it will boot & sort out its drivers in the laptop (often will, and you've nothing to lose trying). Obviously leave a copy of the xp setup files on the drive too!

 

[bcastner]

. See if you can find Win98 drivers for the SCSI PCMCIA CD Rom drive. It will simplify things if you have a CD burner on your XP desktop

. Are you using a retail CD of XP? Because this is a notebook I think it a mistake to try anything else.

 

[edfair]

As Wolluf says, there will be some tinkering with Autoexec and Config to get the files to work on the new location. But if you go with the 98, put all the transient utilities on the hard drive, not just the ones that are on the boot disk.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[bcastner]

wollufs post reminded me that if you do not have SMARTDRV installed through your Win98 Config.sys, the install of XP will take hours.

What you viewed as a freeze may be normal.

 

[jammyo2k]

That was one of the things I'm considering, so I'm going to have another go but installing smart drive beforehand. I did leave the laptop for nearly an hour though with no suggestion of activity so I'm still not sure.

 

[bcastner]

Without SMARDRV it can be very, very slow. 12-18 hours is not unusual for a PIII 600.

But I have a way that worked for me in a similar instance. It will seem improbable on its face, but it did work.

Thesis: Properly prepared, installing XP from CD using your desktop to the notebook hard drive is identical to the process of moving XP to a new motherboard.

Process

. Mount the notebook hard drive on your desktop. Disconnect existing desktop hard drives, and make the notebook hard disk the primary master drive on IDE chain 0.

. Set the desktop BIOS to boot from CD Rom, and boot from the XP CD. Install XP. Make sure you then make a folder and copy the entire contents of the XP Cd \i386 folder to the hard drive.

. Now do the advanced preparation steps for a motherboard change. This involves preloading your XP notebook hard drive image with device drivers it did not need for your desktop PC, but likely will need on the notebook.

For this step, there are some well written guides. Print them out:

General considerations:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=249694

Scary warnings (valid concerns, but most can be ignored in this instance):

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xpfrm.html

The meat of my suggestion: Follow the first two links from CrazyOne's reply in this thread:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21089498.html

See also suggestion #6:

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/other/motherboard/win2k.htm

 

[bcastner]

Also, while connected to the desktop machine, download any drivers needed for that PCMCIA CD Rom drive.

 

[jammyo2k]

I tried running setup with smartdrive running and everything seemed fine during the precopy phase (Which took less than 10 minutes). Then setup informed me that the MSDOS part of the setup had been completed and that it was time to restart the laptop to begin the XP installation proper. I restarted the laptop by pressing enter but the laptop refused to restart after being shut down giving me a 'disk error' report.

I'm going to try bcastners's idea of installing xp to the harddrive first nd then migrating over. I've seen the same model of laptop woking fine with xp, using only the drivers on the cd so hopefull it won't take too much time to complete the fiddling around.

Thanks to everyone's suggestions and I'll be sure to report back as soon as I can.

 

[jammyo2k]

Well, the install xp using another computer hasn't worked. I've tried the method as suggested as bcastner but when I transferred the hardrive to the laptop I got a non-system disk error (even though the harddrive would boot when connected to the desktop machine).

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or have another suggestion?

 

[linney]

Error message when you start your computer with a non-system disk

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;812492&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

This article will tell you what files need to be in the root of the drive.

305595 - HOW TO: Create a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;305595

 

[jammyo2k]

Ok, I'll check the root for the necessary files.

But why would a harddrive that boots on one macine completely fail in another?

 

[linney]

When you had this drive on your other machine was it the only drive on that machine, or was the original drive still connected, with the boot loading files being loaded from the original drive at boot up?

 

[jammyo2k]

Well found out why the laptop would not boot properly. I had a look at the safe mode boot screen and realised that it always hung on mup.sys. It turned out that I needed to have the main computer listed as a ACPI PC instead of a unicode MCPI. Once I made the changes in the hardware manager the laptop then booted perfectly. XP detected all of the hardware without difficulty.

And finally here I am, writing this with my fully functioing Toshiba Portege. Thanks to everyone who gave help or suggestions. I really appreciate it.