Laptop CD drive broken - can I reinstall windows?

[Over Carl]

I need to reinstall windows, but sadly it seems that my lappy cd drive is knackered. I have a proper legit xp pro cd and a few 1gb usb sticks and it does have a working floppy.

However the lappy (an old clevo 5620P) doesn't specifically say anything in bios about booting from usb, only options I get is hd, cd, and removable devices so usb may or may not be covered under that.

Any suggestions?

[Mr.James]

i've got a bootable windows pe usbstick. just copy the installer file to it and run from there... you'll have to use the /makelocalsource (or something similar) command line switch when you kick off the winnt32.exe installer...

here's a guide http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...6-5928902.html on how to do it but using bart pe...

[Over Carl]

Hmm, for some reason I can't find a copy of fdisk anywhere on my pc, or my windows install cd, and it's not there even if I make a boot floppy.

However, I do have a different version of fdisk that comes with partitionmagic that should be ok? Actually that's just given me another idea...

Also the link said it needs to be xp with sp2 - I'm assuming thats only if I wanna make xp boot from the usb stick, won't apply to my situation?

[Over Carl]

Ok, tried using partition magic recovery floppys on my desktop to make a bootable usb. (can't find ms fdisk anywhere )

One usb wasn't detected at all in pm, the other 1gb was detected as 900ish if I loaded up pm, but hung when I tried creating a primary partition at about 25%. tried their version of fdisk which only recognised it as 250ish mb and wouldnt do anything at all to it. (btw it's not an ebay fake, I've filled it to virtually a gig before).

Anyway, try doing same from lappy, wont show either of the usb stick in pm or with the partition magic version of fdisk.

I'm thinking the easiest way might be for me to get a 2.5 -3.5 ide adapter? Worst thing is I seem to have lost the one I had for my amiga 1200

Does this mean my lappy can't boot of usb and that these two sticks are useless for for booting of usb or shall I persevere and try to find ms fdisk or any other suggestions?

[B B Leo]

is your drive partitioned?
windows might be on it you could run it from there?

[Over Carl]

Nah mate, no recover partition on it, bought it from a trade supplier and configured it myself. Sounded like a good idea at the time

[Mario87]

reason you cant find FDISK is that MS removed it from Windows XP! The last version of Windows that had it was either 98SE or ME! Dont think 2000 had it, but I could be wrong! However I know MS removed it from XP!

Only reason I know that is cos I was wanting to use it a couple of years ago and after a bit of googling I found out that they had got rid of it!

[wizard1974uk]

reason you cant find FDISK is that MS removed it from Windows XP! The last version of Windows that had it was either 98SE or ME! Dont think 2000 had it, but I could be wrong! However I know MS removed it from XP!

Only reason I know that is cos I was wanting to use it a couple of years ago and after a bit of googling I found out that they had got rid of it!

I think it is now called DISKPART and is part of the recovery console.

[DJ OD]

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windo...l-windows.html

Long winded, but should work.


DJ OD

[Over Carl]

Hmm, I think I might as well creat a win98 bootdisk see if that fdisk does any better. If that don't work then I suppose my only options are to get the 2.5/3.5 adaptor or a new cd drive.

[Over Carl]

That would be great if the cd drive worked, hence my whole problem.

Anyway, had a look on the bay and 2.5 - 3.5 converters were gonne be about £5-6 inc p&p and it seems I can replace the ancient and broken cd reader with a dvd recorder for a tenner so its a no brainer.

Thanks to everyone, but I think I will probably just fix this the regular way when my writer comes.

[Outcast]

Install over LAN ?

Here's some useful stuff I keep handy....

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

http://www.sysresccd.org/Download.en.php <----- Pretty deep (Use Gparted for Partitioning)

[Mr.James]

more resources here: http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardwa...omusbstick.php

it might be that your bios needs an upgrade or it needs enabling... this guide has some details for different bios manufacturers...

[Over Carl]

Even more fun. Seeing as I just lost out on the drive I was bidding for (maybe karma after evilsatan's thread in the d&d ) I got a bit of luck. Mate wants me to install a hd in his pc for him later. I said ok as long as he lends me his old lappy so I can borrow the cd drive.

Get it in my lappy, the light on the cd drive flashes when I reboot but thats it, pc won't recognise it at all. Put it back in my mate's lappy and its detected straight off.

Put my broken one in, is detected but still doesn't read (although I can actually hear it spin up now, wouldn't yesterday).

WTF? surely they are just both ide devices, just plug in, check to see if recognised by bios and that's it? In case it makes any difference, mate's lappy is an ancient siemens dixdorf p233mmx but all the dimensions of the drives and connectors are same, and as said when it was in mine, light did blink on resets, and try would pop out if button pressed, but thats it.

[Over Carl]

more resources here: http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardwa...omusbstick.php

it might be that your bios needs an upgrade or it needs enabling... this guide has some details for different bios manufacturers...

Would rather not flash bios, lost a desktop motherboard doing that once, if the lappy board goes I may as well chuck it in the bin.

Also I suspect (despite the age - around 4 years) that it can boot off usb as I noticed in bios when I go to bootable devices the help text on the right says that a category can have a + next to it and you can expand a category and the categories were hd, cd and removable devices, but I never see the +.

[Welsh Pete]

I`d probably get a new drive mate. They are normally straight forward to fit, and they are well cheap.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=490907

[Over Carl]

Yeah, that was pretty much the conclusion I came to earlier until I thought about borrowing my mate's.

Think I may give it a bash with the cd drive from his new laptop and if that don't work then I'll have to get a new one (and pray it works).

[Welsh Pete]

Take it to the local shop. We fit `em for a tenner and if it dont work then you dont pay...obviously. But it saves you getting (trying to get) a refund off someone like ebuyer.

[Over Carl]

Take it to the local shop. We fit `em for a tenner and if it dont work then you dont pay...obviously. But it saves you getting (trying to get) a refund off someone like ebuyer.

Buy it brand new and pay someone a tenner to fit it? You must think I'm made of money (althought you do make a good point)

However I've got it sussed - not using methods described above, but using info from the links above joined together a bit.

Step 1 : Make a win 98 boot floppy (I'm using win98se but I don't think it matters)

Step 2: Download drivers for usb sticks under dos, and edit config.sys file to use the drivers (help on that is available here).

Step 3: On my desktop, copy the entire xp cd onto the usb stick.

Step 4: On laptop, boot from boot floppy and format hd.(I'm going to insert the usb stick in before booting in case the dos driver needs to see the usb stick when booting up)

Step 5: Make directory on my c drive called something like wininst and copy the usb stick to it.

Step 6: cd wininst then cd i386 then type setup and hopefully that should be it.

Will report back with the outcome if I don't feel like killing myself after all this headache.

[DJ OD]

You may get a "this program cannot run in dos mode" error...

Might be better to download the XP setup floppy set. Then install using the usb stick?


DJ OD