Toshiba Satellite A135, putting OS directly on HDD?

[sethbest]

I have a Toshiba Satellite A135-S2386 that had an issue where it would short when a optical drive was plugged in. Won't have any display or responses with the drive. If I unplug the drive it seems to work fine.

My problem is that this system will not boot to a bootable USB, and though it tries to load windows from other laptops drives I don't have any drives from similar enough systems to boot with.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can install directly to the hard drive? I did this once with a linux build, and I don't mind going this route again if someone has a suggested linux for this and a way to do it.

Or if anyone has any idea how I could create a bootable partition with a windows xp install on it? I considered setting the hard drive as the drive for my usb stick boot utility, but I remember last time I tried something similiar it took quite a bit of tweaking to get it to work.

 

[Tmagic650]

"My problem is that this system will not boot to a bootable USB"...

Can you borrow an external USB CD/DVD drive, and install the OS that way? Otherwise you will have to replace the internal CD/DVD drive

 

[sethbest]

It's not a matter of replacing the optical drive, I have tried several spares, each causing the same problems. Its a short on the board as far as I can figure.

I have an old sony cd burner usb unit but I can never get anything to boot to it. I'll ask around to see if I can find another external unit, but I'd still be interested in anyones experiences with installing OS directly to hard drive.

 

[Tmagic650]

"but I'd still be interested in anyones experiences with installing OS directly to hard drive"

Think about it, how would you expect this to work? Where would the proper laptop drivers come from, outer space?

 

[sethbest]

First off I have had a lot of success using similiar systems to make hard drives for other systems. This is useful in saving time when switching hard drives.

Secondly I have done this before with linux builds, I just always had to do it manually, and assume there is a better system out there. You basically set up the hard drive as a bootable disk with a RAM based OS installer on it. I did so last time on a tiny old sony vaio with no CD drive using puppylinux. Basic drivers are often found by the installers, and then you can convert the windows driver files for better operation.

Think outside the box Tmagic.

I suppose techspot is windows centric, perhaps this question would be better elsewhere.

 

[Tmagic650]

Personally I would fix the Toshiba laptop and install the OS normally. Many people install an OS using a USB device, which you are unable do to. So instead of insulting us, go elsewhere and good luck

 

[sethbest]

It's your prerogative to read that as an insult. Additionally I would think that "Think about it, how would you expect this to work? Where would the proper laptop drivers come from, outer space? "
is the most insulting part of this thread.

Has anyone else tried a bootable hard drive based install for an OS?

 

[Rabbit01]

Using another computer, what if you partition the HDD into c: & d:, then copy the XP installation files to d:. Make c: bootable using the sys command. Put the HDD in your laptop and turn on. It should boot into c: and you should see a command prompt on screen. Then run the setup for XP in the d: drive.