How to install Windows on a laptop with no Floppy or CD drive ?

[rjh]

I hope someone can help me in this situation, This is my last resort!

Situation:

My laptop does NOT have a CD-ROM or Floppy built into the machine. My laptop currently runs 30gig hd with windows 2000. I wanted to upgrade to a 40gig hd and win XP, so i bought the new harddrive and got an xp prof cd. On my OTHER laptop that does have cdrom in it, i poped the new harddrive into that one to install the OS. The install went flawless and I take the harddrive out and put it in my laptop without the cdrom and it wont boot. It goes through post and then goes to a black screen with the line cursur blinking (lookings like a blinking underscore character.) and it will not boot. Should it matter that the hd is in another laptop? I didnt think it should matter. HELP! Could this be a problem with boot files?

 

[urbandragon]

it does matter. windows xp was designed to only work on 1 computer with the hardware you have installed into it.

If the 2 laptops are not very similar in hardware it will not work.

what kind of laptop do you have that doesn't even have a cdrom in it. I havent seen any modern ones that do not have a cdrom?

 

[rjh]

They are similar, both Fujitsu Lifebook's - The newer one is an PIII M 700mhz, i installed xp on the lifebook with cd (300mhz)

 

[urbandragon]

thanks for clarifying what type laptop. if they do not share very similar qualities such as same motherboard, chipset i am pretty sure it will not work. the only option i see that you may have is to purchase an external cd rom drive and hope to heck that you can boot to it.

there is another option. if the laptop has a bootable nic you could install it via a network install, but that is beyond my ability to help because you would then need a windows 2k or 2k3 server that has RIS installed then you would have to create the RIS image that would be sent to the laptop and etc....

 

[rjh]

I have purchased a external CDROM and Floppy to help me in this adventure, however the laptop is older and therefore cannot boot a cd....AND it is USB, so I have attempted to install XP from the external cd, but xp does not like installing through USB...also i have copied the cd to the harddrive and attempted to install straight from hd but keep getting errors. Its like i take 1 step forward 3 back, frustrating.

 

[urbandragon]

I know what you mean there.

i am out of ideas, short of doing a remote install using windows 2k/2k3 RIS server over a lan.

 

[donjo13]

Get an adapter 2.5 to 3.5 and put the laptop HD in a desktop and install windows on it, then take it out and put it back in. XP is good at finding drivers that way it should work ok. I have two Laptops that I put windows in this way. I also have ghosted one desktop hard drive's XP Pro image to the hard drive in my laptop. It's running fine and I use it everyday.

 

[Liquidlen]

Read this thread ,my answers might apply to your situation;
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic31667.html
It will depend on the way your model was designed.