Laptop worries

[wiscountryboy]

hey i have a dell inspiron 2200 and recently windows crashed, so i could no longer boot up, i also have a bad cd drive in it and the cd drive will not be recognized, the cd drive is not a new issue i just never got around to fixing it...so my question is how can i reinstall windows without using a cd drive, the laptop has usb and lan onboard

Thanks guys

 

[Nodsu]

You can use an USB drive (CD, flash, HD, whatever) as long as your lappy supports booting from it.

You can set up a network boot environment (tricky).

You can take your laptop's hard drive, put it in another system and perform some preliminary installation there.

 

[wiscountryboy]

ok i know my laptop supports booting to a usb device, however do i need to burn an image of the xp boot cd to the hard drive or install xp to the hard drive then boot off of that?

also if anyone knows how can i set up a network boot environment, as i know the laptop supports this function

 

[Nodsu]

You have to install XP (only the first half until the reboot) to the hard drive and also copy the i386 folder there. You can also install DOS (and copy the i386 dir).

As for network install.. Have fun: http://www.1e.com/Download/Products/Using Linux to Install Windows XP with Network Booting.pdf

 

[wiscountryboy]

alright i got the laptop to boot, well almost, it will start to load windows but no matter what i boot from (the internal HD or the USB HD) i get a "inaccessible boot device" error, ive tried removing the internal HD and no changes were made