shanenin Posted March 7, 2007 Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 (edited) I got a laptop to day that is blue screening. The sad part is, I can't get anything to boot from the cdrom. It starts to, but fails as if it is getting read errors. So I am unable to run memtest, or other diagnostic tools that run from a disc. Their is a fair chance a windows reload may fix the problem, but I can't reload windows to see if that will correct it(no cd or floppy). I was going to recommend to my client to have me buy a used cdrom for about $60 off ebay so I could reload windows. A part of me thinks their may be other issues, like the motherboard, so I hate to suggest spending money on a cdrom that is not needed.I found a work around that will allow you to install XP without a cdrom or floppy. I did a test run, on a different hardrive, I am currently in the middle of trying it on the laptop I am attempting to service. Here is the general idea of what needs to be done.1. connect the laptop ide drive to my first ide channel of my desktop(need an adapter).2. format the drive as fat32, then install freedos 7.1 to it.3. then you copy the i386 folder from an xp install disk to the laptop drive.4. Now you can replace the drive in the laptop, then boot from the hardrive, which will run freedos. After you get a "c: prompt" you just enter the command "I386\winnt.exe" This will start the 16 bit windows xp installer. After this is finished, I will convert the drive to ntfs. I will let you know if it completes properly. I don't for see any problems, but........ Edited March 8, 2007 by shanenin Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted March 7, 2007 Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 It should work. I was involved with this same discussion last year at WindowsBBS because of the same situation. Make sure you run all of the diagnostic tools first while it is in your PC. Buying that adapter will probably be an asset down the road. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
hitest Posted March 7, 2007 Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 Yeah, that should work shanenin:-) A tech friend of mine loads XP images that way from a laptop. I'll be curious to hear how it works out for you:-) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted March 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 (edited) Buying that adapter will probably be an asset down the road.I already have one of those. It is an ide to usb adapter. It came with a second piece that allowed me to hook to either a 3.5 or a 2.5 inch hardrive(or optical). It is one of the most used tools I have(besides my philips). I am currently writing this from the laptop. So far it has not blue screened. I think windows was just corrupted, I got off easy this time.I just need to edit the boot.ini file to get rid of the dual boot. As of now it defaults to xp after 30 seconds. After looking at the file, it does not make sense to how to change it. I expected to just remove the second operating system, but it has just one listed[boot loader]timeout=30default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetectC:\="Microsoft Windows"I also should convert it to ntfs. It is working well, so I am hesitant to screw with it.edit added later//it converted without issue. Edited March 7, 2007 by shanenin Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted March 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 I deleted this line out of the boot.ini, now it just boots directly into XPC:\="Microsoft Windows" Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted March 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 The strange thing is the cdrom works fine under windows. Does the bios have its own drivers that read the cdrom to allow cds to be boot directly? Could a corrupt bios cause the errors when booting from a cd? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted March 7, 2007 Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 The strange thing is the cdrom works fine under windows. Does the bios have its own drivers that read the cdrom to allow cds to be boot directly? Could a corrupt bios cause the errors when booting from a cd?I'm assuming it does. Remember back in the day with 95 & 98 the CDROM drivers were on the bootdisk? You don't have to load them anymore. I'm dealing with a machine right now where I can't get any drive to work. Luckily the chip's removable so I could send it out to get flashedMark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted March 7, 2007 Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 How old is the laptop? Maybe it never had CD-Rom support from the Bios. At the factory they probably preloaded the OS to the hard drive with a customized disk before installing it to the laptop. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted March 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2007 it is an old xp laptop, with a celeron 1.3ghz. It definitely has support to boot from the cd, it even tries: when I boot from an xp install cd, I get an error about missing ntdlr; when I boot from a linux cd, I get a checksome failed error; memtest gave me another different error. This defiantly seems as the built cdrom drivers in the bios are not working correctly. I suspect a bios update may have fixed it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
shanenin Posted March 8, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 8, 2007 I got another laptop today with a bad cdrom, crazy. The method works great. It installed flawlessly. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Pete_C Posted March 8, 2007 Report Share Posted March 8, 2007 (edited) For future reference; these are another option Apricorn 2.5 inch drive USB enclosure with EZ transfer Edited March 8, 2007 by Pete_C Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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