This laptop has no internal floppy or cd drives. I connect external floppy and cd to the usb port but it doesn't read either. I change the boot menu to floppy and cd, all did not work. I connected the ethernet cable from my network to it and it reads alright. the screen comes up with the client mac address.
Now my question is; how can I connect a laptop with no operating system to my home network to be able to install the windows xp from the share drive?

Thanks for any help out there.

Kris

You're going to need a whole lot more than an XP share to boot an OS via network PXE. I don't think you want to go down this route. The 'easiest' way to do it is to use Windows 2003 RIS services to create a PXE boot server, but it is more complicated than most would care for.

To boot from an external CD or floppy drive, you'll need to change the boot order in the BIOS configuration to USB, or removeable devices or that particular USB device... You'll have to poke around and see what's availabe. I'm willing to bet this notebook supports USB booting.

Aside from getting it to boot up from USB, the only good way to get it up and running again is another computer (using a laptop drive > USB adapter or 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE adapter) or how about you get a replacement drive on eBay? They are usually pretty cheap.

Rick, Thank you for your help.
I have a replacement external hard drive with usb for laptop. I format it through the desktop disk management and it's now blank. How do I install the windows xp on the laptop hard drive? and how do I transfer the hard drive to the laptop for it to boot to the xp? (the hard drive is removable from the storage case).
Help me Rick.