Re-installing Windows on an old laptop

I have an old laptop and I want to re-install Windows XP on it. The problem is that this laptop does not have an optical drive. I checked the boot sequence in the BIOS. It does not show an option to boot from USB. It have only two options:

Boot from HD.
Boot using Realtek agent (network boot).

I tried to copy the Windows CD to second drive D:\ and run the installed from there. However, I could not format the C:\ drive. Windows complaints about setup files will be removed or something like that.

I tried to boot the laptop using PXE, but I could not. It seems that the DHCP request did not get answered.

I thought I could use a USB CD-ROM drive (I don't have one to try), but it might not work as there is no option to boot from USB. Do you think it will work? Do I have other options to try? Any recommendations?

Khaled

Posted 2011-12-09T17:09:34.823

Reputation: 649

You may need to get a USB Optical drive – Sandeep Bansal – 2011-12-09T17:14:05.473

Will it work? I mean the BIOS does not support booting from USB! – Khaled – 2011-12-09T17:16:45.733

Can you give the laptop model etc, then we can move on from there. – Sandeep Bansal – 2011-12-09T17:18:00.223

Sometimes the BIOS will only show a bootable option if that option is actually available. For instance, once you've connected a USB CD Drive you may then see the option to boot from it. However, this isn't common in older machines. – music2myear – 2011-12-09T17:23:59.120

Actually, it is not my laptop. It has the word sylvania besides a g written on it. – Khaled – 2011-12-09T17:41:49.410

How exactly have you "tried to boot the laptop using PXE"? Have you checked the packets?

– Tamara Wijsman – 2011-12-09T17:47:54.157

@TomWijsman: I tried to follow this tutorial: http://www.lockstockmods.net/2008/04/25/install-windows-over-network-with-pxe/

– Khaled – 2011-12-09T17:51:10.123

@music2myear: I just plugged the USB flash in the laptop and entered BIOS setup. I found that the BIOS recognized the USB as option in boot sequence!! If you post your suggestion as an answer, I will accept it. – Khaled – 2011-12-09T17:52:46.080

Answers

music2myear

Posted 2011-12-09T17:09:34.823

Reputation: 34 957

Glad to be of help. – music2myear – 2011-12-09T22:02:12.727

Most older laptops support booting from FDD or usb FDD

Microsoft has a floppy disk set to get you a windows environment to work from, I have done this. Be sure to use the SP2 disk set, and choose Home or Pro.

Set the bios to boot from usb FDD or FDD, with the usb floppy drive and a usb optical drive connected, boot to the FDD, you will have to load 6 floppies, once done you can run the setup.exe command and point to the usb optical drive letter that has the XP install disc, XP setup should start. If you have an internal floppy drive then you can use that instead of the usb floppy drive.

Moab

Posted 2011-12-09T17:09:34.823

Reputation: 54 203

I don't have floppy disks and the laptop does not have floppy drive. – Khaled – 2011-12-09T17:36:35.460

You will have to get some floppies and a usb floppy drive then. Another suggestion is to connect the hard drive to another PC, then install XP on that drive while it is connected to the other PC, then move the hard drive back to the notebook and hope it boots, it may or may not work – Moab – 2011-12-10T16:51:52.860