I have an old Toshiba laptop I’m trying to put a larger hard drive in to. The laptop has no floppy drive and only a USB CD drive. I can’t install Windows XP on the new hard drive using the USB CD drive as the laptop doesn’t recognise the USB CD drive early enough. The same applies to USB memory sticks. I have tried installing Windows XP on the drive in a later model Toshiba laptop and then transferring the hard drive to the old laptop but without success. I thought that even if it ran imperfectly it might give me access to the USB CD drive and I could have managed to get the Windows XP installation to run from that for a fresh install. It doesn’t run at all. I’ve searched eBay to find a floppy drive I could use but with no luck. I bought a Toshiba universal floppy drive caddy there but it has the wrong plug. I’ve now run out of options.

So, to the question. Is there anyway I can copy the Windows XP installation CD to the new hard drive and get it to run, ie to install Windows XP on the same drive. I can partition the new drive using the later model Toshiba.

I’ve a feeling it’s not possible but I’d love to be proved wrong.

Thanks in advance

Mick

What model of Toshiba laptop do you have. I have mistakenly thought that all Toshibe laptops come with built-in CD-rom drives except the specialty Libretto laptop. I also thought the libretto's top processor speed was only a 266 speed Pentium 2. While i have run XP on a intel P3-500 processor it was very slow and i would not recommend anything less than a P4 processor computer for XP.

Heres how someone slipstreamed USB drivers to a small business server software OS. This same method applies to a XP CD.

http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/sbs2003-dr...slipstream.html

Also this one which is a lot of reading.

http://www.syschat.com/install-windows-xp-...ppy-cd-463.html

SRX660

What boot options do you have in the BIOS? Do you have anything like external device? If yes, make it first priority boot device and try the CD drive either with windows or DOS.

Thanks very much for the astoundingly quick replies, guys.

SRX660: The laptop in question is an old Toshiba Portege 3440CT, specification here: 3440CT. The young lad who owns the laptop wants XP I’m afraid. I’ve told him his machine doesn’t really have the welly but he is insistent.

I need to boot the Windows installation from somewhere on the hard drive. Ideally I’d be able to boot from the new hard drive in the same way as from the Windows XP start-up floppy set. I have access to a more recent Toshiba laptop currently running Windows XP which I can swap drives on. So I can install a version of Windows (or Linux, if that would help) that way. But I can’t install a version of XP that will run when swapped back in to the old laptop.

TheSkeptic: There are no options in the BIOS to boot from USB and booting from the other options doesn’t find the CD drive. I think I’m caught in a Catch-22 situation here that probably can’t be resolved.

Once again, thanks very much, guys.

You are putting a $100 operating system on a $100 laptop that will be so disappointing in the way it runs that the project will be abandoned eventually. It is better to buy a newer laptop than try that. My Brand new Acer Aspire dualcore laptop only cost me $350.

I am not saying it can't be done. I have installed Win 98 on a panasonic CF-27 laptop that had no cdrom drive in it, and also installed Win 98 on a Portage 660CDT laptop that i did not have a floppy drive for at that time. I used a desktop computer and a laptop drive adapter to install the operating system files on the drive and then installed and booted it in the laptop. I do know the problems and strongly suggest to run Win 98 on the laptop to make it useable.

SRX660