When I was replacing the broken hdd in mum's computer, I must have broken the cd drive connection and now the Windows Xp disk won't boot. Are there any ways to install Windows Xp on a computer that doesnt have floppy drive or a working cd drive? Preferably a way that doesn't require the hdd removal.
It is possible but particularly nasty. Especially if you don't want to remove the hard drive. Booting in and starting installation from a bootable USB drive is potentially possible but not for the faint of heart. It would be easier to replace the CD drive if necessary, and CD drives are a dime a dozen. Starting from the basics: is booting from CD enabled in the BIOS? Is it a desktop? I would check the connections on the hard drive and the CD drive. If you have a PATA / IDE setup, and both devices are on the same cable and set to master or set to slave, neither will work. If the cable is not cable select compatible (40pin and not 80), with one of the devices set to cable select, you will probably have problems. Does the BIOS / POST screen recognize both the hard drive and the CD drive?
Its a desktop and there are photos of the computer on the link. I followed these instructions to replace the hdd. http://www.bunkai.jp/desktop/dell/4700c.html On the 6th photo, you can see the brown thing that is attached to the cd rom. I might have scratched the surface when I was putting in the hdd. I think both hdd and cd drive were recognized. Mum has the computer so I will have to ask her about the BIOS stuff. :eusa_doh: When the computer is booted, it said insert installation disk so it went in, then after few seconds, the same message came up. Mum has a windows xp laptop. Can that be used to install xp onto the hdd?
Ah yes, that would be quite the sensitive cable, and not of the garden variety sort that could be easily replaced. As I said check the connections on the cable, it may just be loose on one of the ends. Methods of installing it onto that computer without a CD drive are pretty advanced and depend on whether you have a recovery CD or a normal CD. If you have a normal Windows CD: It is possible to create a WindowsXP BootCD (such as UBCD4WIN or BartPE) and install such a boot disk on a USB drive (external hard drive or flash drive), and get the system to boot off of it, though that isn't a super easy feat. From there you can initiate an installation of Windows, or restore an image of a working Windows install (from a program such as DriveimageXML, or Macrium Reflect). If you want to use an image to "Transplant" a Windows installation, that again is no easy feat as frequently Windows will not boot if the hard drive controller changes from under it. The only real hope is to preinstall the required drivers, and use a utility like Sysprep to prepare Windows to re-detect the hard drive controller.
You could download a copy of XP. But I'm only saying that because you own a legit copy... And I'm guessing you could run it from a partician of your HD. But I'm not sure, never done it. As Kenko said, CD/DVD drives are hell cheap, you can get a new pioneer one for under 40 (in aus dollars)
He has a low profile Dell unit which use more or less Laptop CD drive, not garden variety type. And chances are if there's a hardware problem it's the cable.
It would need to be the correct version though. Not just Home or Professional and the right language, but also OEM, retail or corporate (so OEM if there is a CD Key license sticker on the PC case). Plus if it is a Dell PC you'll probably need a copy of the Dell OEM CD as the Dell CD key won't be accepted by a regular OEM CD. You should use the CD key on the license sticker on the case so it is the correct legal license for the PC, then you won't run into problems with it being tagged as non-genuine. If the problem is the drive and not the CD, and the aim is to copy the CD contents to the hard disk for installing (something I haven't tried so I don't know if it would work) then it would be easiest to copy the proper CD to a USB drive on another PC rather than messing around with downloaded copies which may or may not work and could be infected with something nasty. Then you know it's the right version and is clean. The best solution though would be to fix or replace the CD drive or cable. Try eBay for the parts you need. Put the word "dell", the model number and the part description into the search.
Following up on my post above, here's some actual info about booting a USB drive. This article might work to directly install windows: How to Install Windows xp using USB Flash Disk http://www.jcmiras.net/surge/p96.htm Another option is through UBCD4WIN http://ubcd4win.com/ UBCD4WIN is a recovery environment that is essentially a CD bootable version of WindowsXP with loads of utilities. I find it an indispensable tool because no matter how good a Linux LiveCD (such as Knoppix) sometime you MUST use Windows tools to recover a system. With UBCD4WIN you can create a USB bootable drive with an included plug in. You could create such a drive, and then on another USB drive (or partition) have a copy of the WindowsXP CD files and after booting the UBCD, you can format the harddrive you just installed. UBCD4WIN will require either WindowsXP installation media (Home or Professional, SP1 or better), or it can pull files off your current Windows installation. As Paul mentioned there's something funky with Dell OEM installs and Dell OEM CDs, and they sometimes require more work to get working with UBCD4WIN After running through the program once and building a CD image (no need to burn), run: C:\ubcd4win\plugin\!Critical\ubcd4winToUSB and point it to the USB drive you want to use. I recommend a USB hard drive over a flash drive. It must have a partition of 2GB or less (I'd recommend at least 1GB) to put the install on, using FAT16 format. NOTE: on my 80GB external hard drive I already had an empty 1GB partition for this purpose and a 79GB partition with all my data. After using ubcd4winToUSB it frigged up my main partition and it became unreadable. I was able to recover it but there is definitely a real risk of data loss. In explorer open up the other USB drive (or partition) and run setup.exe or the Winnt32.exe in the I386 directory, this will start the Windows installation. This article has some information about starting Windows installation from BartPE (which is what UBCD4WIN is based on). Skip to step 3 after creating the bootable flash drive: http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb/ EDIT: UBCD4WIN contains a tool for starting windows setup, if you have a copy of the files from the windows CD
Thanks so much for the info. I will give it a go Though mum will be the one doing it since Im living overseas. Hope it works out.
