Diskless Boot on notebook w/o os

[gds923]

I recently acquired a Gateway solo 5300 with a bad hd. I ordered a new clean hard drive, and put it in the machine and expected that I could put the windows xp cd in and install it on the new hd. However, I have been unable to get the notebook to boot from 2 different xp cds now and have figured that I will not be able to use this approach to install xp on the computer. I have read some about possibly booting from a network and installing the necessary files from another computer, but I have no idea how to do this. If anyone could give advice on this subject or point me towards a book/website that might help I would appreciate it.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Upon starting that laptop, go into the BIOS (try hitting F1, F2, Del, Esc keys, maybe the PC tells you which key to use, or check the manual or download the manual and find it there).
In BIOS set it to start from 1)CD, 2)HD
That is all

 

[gds923]

I have already tried changing every setting in the bios, and nothing has worked. Any other suggestions?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

You can get 2.5" to 3.5" HD-adapters.
Stick that HD in a PC, partition the HD 50-50.
Format the both partitions with FAT32.
Use a W98-floppy to transfer system onto that HD (format c: /s).
Copy the whole XP-CD onto the second partition.
Put the HD back in the laptop. It should be able to boot into DOS.
Install XP from the HD's second partition.