Dell laptop problems

[Orjan]

Hi, everybody!

I was asked by a friend to install Windows on her laptop she had gotten from her father when he got a new one.. She doesn´t have a floppy, and the internal dvd-rom didn´t work.. I thought to myself, no biggie, just use an external one..
Yeah, right.. Turns out the motherboard is damaged somehow and wont accept any optical drives at all.. How weird is that?

Anyway, I tried taking out the harddrive and installing Windows on another computer, but this didnt work at all.. I plugged it back in and all I got was a big ol´ black screen staring at me..

So does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do to remedy this situation? I placed a bid for an external USB floppy on our "local ebay" here in Sweden, but the auction doesnt end for quite a while, and I want to fix it as soon as possible.. Besides, I dont even know if I can fix it with the floppy anyway.. My hair is turning gray here.. :-)

So, my fellow experts.. Help me! :-D

[jkirk]

and the internal dvd-rom didn´t work

doesn't work at all or doesn't boot?

if it won't boot go into the bios settings and make sure the dvd drive is enabled as a boot device.(some systems come with floppy and cdrom disabled for booting to speed up load time)

[Orjan]

It doesn´t work at all.. :-(

I copied the XP CD onto the harddrive on my other computer, and will attempt to boot it later, but I dont even know if there is a command to start the installation through DOS..?

[jkirk]

when you go to the bios does it list the dvd drive at all?

even if the usb cdrom would have worked the hard drive will probably load long before it is recognized.

maybe if it has a laptop hd maybe you can get a 2.5/2.5/3.5 adapter cable(if ribbon) so you can hook up the hard drive and cdrom drive simultaneously on the ide chain. then set the bios to boot from the cdrom drive.

when booting it should auto start but if it don't or have to use a convoluted way to start it up type "setup"(specify location) and the installation will start.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Dell has certain own driver stuff, check their website for the model you got, maybe that'll solve certain probs... (for the rest I dunno and I'm too drunk atm)

[whabang]

Is the unit under warranty? In that case,just call the support.

[whabang]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
Dell has certain own driver stuff, check their website for the model you got, maybe that'll solve certain probs... (for the rest I dunno and I'm too drunk atm)
Reference drivers will work just fine, although, the system software has to be installed.

[Boot_WB]

That laptop is not going to be good for much without a CD rom drive anyway - why not just replace that?

With XP if you install on one computer then swap the hard drive to another you will lose the activation (too many changed hardware flags), not sure if you will be able to 'reactivate it though...'

It's a long way round, but...

1 You could install win98 ont he hard-drive using a seperate PC
2 put the hard drive back into the laptop
3 Wait for W98 to pick up the hardware
4 Set up networking & map the CD rom on your desktop
5 Start the WXP installation from the mapped CD drive

Not guaranteeing it will work, but if all else fails may be worth considering.

[whabang]

1) Put the HDD in another computer.
2) Use a Windows 98-floppy, to create a FAT32-partition on the HDD.
3) Format the partition and make it bootable (format c: /s)
4) Copy Windows XP's installation directory (i386) to the HDD.
5) Put the drive back into the laptop, and boot from the drive.
6) CD to the i386-directory, and start the installation by typing WINNT.