Installing XP in laptop without CDROM (have floppy)

[Albpoli]

My laptop's cdrom is not working anymore, and I am left only with floppy drive, so I was wondering if my XP is not working anymore how can I install XP without CDROM?
My first idea is to make an image or to copy XP cd into D: drive and maybe I can install from there. Is this possible?

thanks

 

[Nodsu]

Yes, as long as the D: filesystem is FAT32 (or you have a DOS floppy that (properly) supports NTFS).

 

[Albpoli]

Ntfs

actually both C: and D: are NTFS and not FAT or FAT32. Right now what I do when I need a CD is that I create a virtual CD into my desktop and then I am in network with my desktop I copy from there and I work with that CD as virtual CD, but in case XP os is gone then no virtual CD would be.

 

[Nodsu]

Format D: as FAT32 then? You can convert it back to NTFS later. Of course you could compile a boot floppy with network support letting you access some network share and access the CD contents that way.. (This method is much more frustrating than it may seem)

 

[Albpoli]

all my data are in D:

so if I change from NTFS to Fat am I going to lose them? I guess yes isn't it?

 

[Nodsu]

Another option would be an USB CDROM. Either a dedicated device or a CD-ROM drive attached to a hard drive enclosure. Even if your computer can't boot from that you can still make a DOS floppy with USB support.