Re-installing on laptop with no CD drive

"Alpha" <alpha RemoveThis @do.not.respond> wrote in message
news:eMIyp1cFJHA.4712@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> We need to re-install Windows 98 SE or ME or 2K-Pro on a laptop that has
> its
> CD drive internal connection damaged. The floppy drive works though.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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Thanks for the very quick and informative responses!
This will be really helpful here now.
Regards and thanks again. God Bless!

Alpha wrote:

> Can we - take out the hard drive and format it (using appropriate
> existing adapters) in FAT on another machine and -
> copy the CD contents and device drivers to an install folder,
> and - put that drive back into the laptop, and -
> boot with the Win98 floppy, and -
> run Setup from the install folder, bypassing the CD drive?

Yes, you can do that.

In fact, if you remove the laptop's hard drive and slave it to another
PC, yes you can fdisk and format the hard drive, and put the dos system
files on the drive (format drive: /s) to make it bootable.

Then you can copy the contents of a win-98 CD to the drive (I'd copy it
to it's own directory, like c:\win98-cd).

While the drive is still slaved to another PC, that is a good time to
transfer other installation CD's to the drive - like Microsoft office or
other apps. It's also a good time to download win-98 drivers for the
laptop's video hardware, motherboard chipset, ethernet and usb hardware,
etc. It's far easier to install them once they're already on the drive.

Don't forget to put a copy of winzip on the drive as well, as it will
probably be needed to unzip those driver files.

When it's all done, and the drive is back in the laptop, just make sure
that there is no file on the drive called "win.com". Sometimes (or most
times) the presence of that file anywhere on a system will prevent
win-98 installation.

You can install from a flat folder and MS-DOS. If your goal is to
install Windows 2000 copy the i386 folder from the Windows 2000 CD to
the hard drive and then start the Setup with a Windows 98 Startup
diskette, that entails of course that the drive will be formated FAT32.
Make sure that you have smartdrv.exe on the W98 startup floppy.

After you copy the i386 folder to the hard disk you can then start the
Windows 2000 installation from MS-DOS by executing WINNT from the i386
folder on the hard disk.

See here for typical instructions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315349

The instructions are for XP but it's the same thing for Windows 2000.

You can convert the file system to NTFS after the installation but make
sure that the partition is aligned to a 4K boundary or else you will end
up with 512 byte clusters. http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

John

Alpha wrote:

> We need to re-install Windows 98 SE or ME or 2K-Pro on a laptop that has its
> CD drive internal connection damaged. The floppy drive works though.
>
> We have all the original Windows CDs and a Win98 boot floppy, as well as all
> the required drivers. The unit originally had Win98 on it that was later
> upgraded to WinME and subsequently to Win2K-Pro.
>
> Can we - take out the hard drive and format it (using appropriate existing
> adapters) in FAT on another machine and -
> copy the CD contents and device drivers to an install folder, and -
> put that drive back into the laptop, and -
> boot with the Win98 floppy, and -
> run Setup from the install folder, bypassing the CD drive?
>
> Somebody says this can be done but I wanted to hear from the learned folks
> here first before proceeding.
>
> Regards and TIA
>
> Alpha
> -------
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Shouldn't be a problem at all.

Format the drive as FAT32, copy the folder Win9x from the Win Me CD to the
newly formatted drive. Replace drive in laptop, boot to DOS using your
Boot floppy and then run setup.exe that is in the C:\Win9x folder.
--
Mike Maltby
mike.maltby RemoveThis @gmail.com


Alpha <alpha RemoveThis @do.not.respond> wrote:

> We need to re-install Windows 98 SE or ME or 2K-Pro on a laptop that
> has its CD drive internal connection damaged. The floppy drive works
> though.
> We have all the original Windows CDs and a Win98 boot floppy, as well
> as all the required drivers. The unit originally had Win98 on it that
> was later upgraded to WinME and subsequently to Win2K-Pro.
>
> Can we - take out the hard drive and format it (using appropriate
> existing adapters) in FAT on another machine and -
> copy the CD contents and device drivers to an install folder, and -
> put that drive back into the laptop, and -
> boot with the Win98 floppy, and -
> run Setup from the install folder, bypassing the CD drive?
>
> Somebody says this can be done but I wanted to hear from the learned
> folks here first before proceeding.
>
> Regards and TIA
>
> Alpha
> -------

"Alpha" <alpha.DeleteThis@do.not.respond> wrote in message
news:eMIyp1cFJHA.4712@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> We need to re-install Windows 98 SE or ME or 2K-Pro on a laptop that has
> its
> CD drive internal connection damaged. The floppy drive works though.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


The task went off absolutely smoothly. Windows 2000 Pro was installed off
the hard drive.
The HDD was formatted and "sys"ed and then a folder created to copy the
entire contents of the install CD on another machine.
Did not even need the boot floppy to get to the hard drive prompt.
Just once the set-up process asked to verify the location of the install
files.
Thanks for the encouragement and very helpful information.
Regards and God Bless.

Do not format that drive while it is installed in another machine. Format
it before removing it from the laptop, and use the other installation only
for copying the installation files onto the drive.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Alpha" <alpha RemoveThis @do.not.respond> wrote in message
news:eMIyp1cFJHA.4712@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> We need to re-install Windows 98 SE or ME or 2K-Pro on a laptop that has
> its
> CD drive internal connection damaged. The floppy drive works though.
>
> We have all the original Windows CDs and a Win98 boot floppy, as well as
> all
> the required drivers. The unit originally had Win98 on it that was later
> upgraded to WinME and subsequently to Win2K-Pro.
>
> Can we - take out the hard drive and format it (using appropriate existing
> adapters) in FAT on another machine and -
> copy the CD contents and device drivers to an install folder, and -
> put that drive back into the laptop, and -
> boot with the Win98 floppy, and -
> run Setup from the install folder, bypassing the CD drive?
>
> Somebody says this can be done but I wanted to hear from the learned folks
> here first before proceeding.
>
> Regards and TIA
>
> Alpha
> -------
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>