[dango111]

Hello,

I'm about to buy XP Home OEM to install on a laptop I've refurbed, but it doesn't have a CD drive so I want to install it using my main PC via a USB cable. Is this possible and if so, can someone tell me how? About OEM, is it that you can only register for updates once? If the install goes wrong, will I be able to reisntall it? Thanks, Dan

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You will not be able to install it the way you are thinking.

Instead, buy yourslef a 2.5 inch drive enclosure, and remove the drive from the laptop and place it in there. Hook it up to a second machine, partition the drive in two parts. Leave the first part unformatted. Format the second part fat32. Make the secodn partition about 520mb

Copy the contents of your windows cd's i386 folder to the fat32 drive . Place the drive back in the laptop

Boot the laptop, using a windows 98 boot disk, ignore warnings about drives not being formatted. Switch to the second drive (d:) and run the winnt.exe file to begin setup, let winxp install format the first partition to ntfs

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Windows xp OEM is Licensed to a specific machine. If you make a mistake, you are entitled to re-register for updates as often as needed for THAT machine and only that machine. You will, however, not be able to activate online more than once or twice. Subsequent activations require you to call Microsoft and activate on the phone. You will need to explain that this is being installed on only one machine, the original machine, and that you needed to reinstall it due to some problem.

If you pruchased an OEM for a different machine, and are upgrading, then you are not entitled to place this install on this machine.

[gerryf]

You will not be able to install it the way you are thinking.

Instead, buy yourslef a 2.5 inch drive enclosure, and remove the drive from the laptop and place it in there. Hook it up to a second machine, partition the drive in two parts. Leave the first part unformatted. Format the second part fat32. Make the secodn partition about 520mb

Copy the contents of your windows cd's i386 folder to the fat32 drive . Place the drive back in the laptop

Boot the laptop, using a windows 98 boot disk, ignore warnings about drives not being formatted. Switch to the second drive (d:) and run the winnt.exe file to begin setup, let winxp install format the first partition to ntfs

----------------


Windows xp OEM is Licensed to a specific machine. If you make a mistake, you are entitled to re-register for updates as often as needed for THAT machine and only that machine. You will, however, not be able to activate online more than once or twice. Subsequent activations require you to call Microsoft and activate on the phone. You will need to explain that this is being installed on only one machine, the original machine, and that you needed to reinstall it due to some problem.

If you pruchased an OEM for a different machine, and are upgrading, then you are not entitled to place this install on this machine.

[dango111]

Awesome answer Gerry, thanks. I'm clear on the OEM question, it will only be used on this one laptop. I have a 2.5" enclosure and was hoping to carry out a similar procedure to that you describe. But you present me with a problem... my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive either, I can only boot from the HDD. Any ideas?
Thanks, Dan

[Fenor]

Not to butt in, but if the laptop you are working on doesn't have a floppy OR a cd-rom drive, then most likely it will be too slow to even run XP. What is the make & model of it? Did the laptop never have a cd-rom drive or floppy drive installed in it? Are they there just not working or .... ???

Fenor

[dango111]

Thanks for the input Fenor. It's a Toshiba 7020CT, PII 366 MHz. They never came with either CD or floppy other than in a docking station that I don't have. It would be a lot easier to buy one, but I'm on a shoe string and it's already stretched by the cost of XP.
Thanks, Dan

[gerryf]

You're not butting in Fenor

I agree, this thing is pretty marginal. At best, you probably have 128mb of ram, which will be like poking yourself in the eye with a stick waiting for it to load.

The lowest system I have ever run Windows XP on and been marginally happy with it would be a p2 400 with 512 mb or ram

IF you can get this up and running, you are going to have to turn all the eye candy off...and then it will still hurt like the blazes.

[dango111]

I agree, it will be fairly painful but it's what I have, so I'd like to get it working. Any more ideas on how I can get an operating system on this disk without using the floppy to boot from?

[gerryf]

Dang, this is harder than it ought to be

does the other machine have a floppy disk? Are you willing to spend $10?

You will need a windows 98 bootdisk and one of these

http://store.pchcabl...nodrad25in.html

you can get them elsewhere...radioshak used to have them

Unplug your current drive (to make certain you don't accidently erase the wrong drive) and plug the 3.5 to 2.5 converter in

Boot the other system with a 98 boot floppy, with the floppy drive set as first boot device.

the laptop drive will register as the c: drive

fdisk the drive to make partition

format with the following command

format c: /s to copy system files over

that should be bootable.

Now drop the drive in the 2.5 inch enclosure and copy the i386 directory over.

Put it back in the laptop, boot it, and you should be sitting at a c: prompt

cdange directories
cd i386

then run setup with

winnt.exe

should work....