Installing XP on external drive for different computer

[imekul]

Hi guys,

I'm trying to solve something here. I have a Toshiba Tecra laptop with a freshly-formatted hard drive. I simply want to reinstall XP on it.

The problem is, my CD-ROM drive on the laptop will not boot from a CD or DVD. No matter what the boot order, it will not boot. I suspect it's because I swapped out the Toshiba-issued Mat****a drive for a DVD burner. At any rate, it just will not boot from any kind of bootable disc.

So I'm trying to think of alternate ways to get into the Windows XP setup. One idea I had was if there was any way to plug that laptop hard drive into a different computer via USB and somehow install Windows from there. I'm not sure if this would work, though, because of the master boot record and everything.

A second idea I had was if there was some boot floppy disk (I have a USB floppy drive, so I can boot from diskettes) that would basically, in turn, boot straight from the CD-ROM drive. So far, I haven't been able to find anything, though. I have found XP setup diskettes and all, but for some reason they don't seem to be working right.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

[kimsland]

MS have a set of floppy disks that can be used to install (well start install) of Windows Xp here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994

But I wonder if your DVD would be helped by doing a bios update on it (the DVD Drive bios that is) This tool http://www.dvdinfopro.com/index.php (umm, run from inside Windows !!) will help in that area.

 

[imekul]

Thanks for the idea. I actually tried that and would get the 0x0000007B STOP error each time, while on the sixth diskette.

As far as updating the BIOS, I may have to give that a shot once I get Windows back on this thing. Sounds like a good idea.

 

[Nodsu]

Update both the drive firmware and the laptop BIOS.

Can the drive read CDs in general and just can't boot? In that case, you could boot using a simple DOS floppy with CD-ROM drivers and then run the DOS mode XP setup from the CD.

What if you used a USB CD-ROM drive?