Installing XP on a Laptop with no CD

[zenithan]

Here's the sum of my issue:

Client has laptop, CD Drive is jammed shut. Not opening.
Will NOT boot to USB devices.
HD has failed completly.

So, I have a new HD for it. However no way to actually install Windows XP.

I need to get the new HD with XP installed on it. Any ideas? I tried formatting it with a 98Bootcd on my dekstop and it refused to move the system files over to the new drive. Kept saying Not ready.

[Monty007]

Yoy will have to replace the cd drive.

[zenithan]

Actually no you don't. Not at all.

Here's how I fixed it:

Connected IDE Laptop drive to my desktop, booted to a windows 98 boot cd.

Formatted said drive with format c: /s /q to make it have a fat32 partition that boots to command line.

Then booted into normal OS on my desktop and copied over the WinXP Pro CD.

Boot Drive back in laptop, booted to command prompt, ran winnt.exe in the i386 folder to start windows XP setup.

Now, this did sadly not work at this point. It should of, but XP setup ran, rebooted once, and then the disk would not boot because my XP cd for some reason tried to make the parition NTFS before converting it. I think this is an issue with the way my XP Pro cd was made, as you can install XP from command line by starting winnt.exe manually from a 98boot disk.

I fixed this by coping the win98 CD to the drive from my desktop and then installing win98 from the drive once I booted to the command prompt on the laptop.

Once win98 was up and running I just ran the setup.exe from the WinXP cd folder and installed XP no problem.

Now I have the client's laptop with no working CD and no ability to boot from USB with a fresh clean copy of XP installed perfectly.

It's a long method, but it will work if anyone else needs to do it.