[nath]

hey i hav got a dell inspiron 7500 to fix
1 problem is completly wiped it, then i noticed the only cd drive i had was an external one that isnt by dell or ment for this model, its an external cd drive usb connection, how do i get it to boot my windows me disk its so annoyin me, i tried everything, and it dont appear as a drive in bios.
help please

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If you do not have USB or external CD-drive in bios boot options, you are not going to be able to boot to that drive.

You didn't mention the cd-drive model. A slim hope is thay have a DOS driver and your laptop supports legacy usb devices. I wouldn't not count on it.

What I would do in your case (assuming you lack an RIS server--him, that is redundant), is head to newegg or a local computer store, get yourself a 2.5 drive enclosure, put your notebook drive in there, copy the windowsme install files to a directory on the drive using a different computer, reinsert in laptop, install windowsme from the directory.

[gerryf]

If you do not have USB or external CD-drive in bios boot options, you are not going to be able to boot to that drive.

You didn't mention the cd-drive model. A slim hope is thay have a DOS driver and your laptop supports legacy usb devices. I wouldn't not count on it.

What I would do in your case (assuming you lack an RIS server--him, that is redundant), is head to newegg or a local computer store, get yourself a 2.5 drive enclosure, put your notebook drive in there, copy the windowsme install files to a directory on the drive using a different computer, reinsert in laptop, install windowsme from the directory.

[nath]

i own another laptop.....could i just take out the drive and put it into my other laptop instead of buying an enclosure?
that should work shouldnt it
hit me back man
nath

[gerryf]

Putting the drive in another laptop won't help if you cannot get the installation files on it.

But, if you have a floppy and cd on that, then yes...

Install the drive in the other computer. Boot with floppy boot disk and cd-rom support. Insert cd drive. Copy the windows installation files over to the harddrive via DOS (the entire win9x folder is where the install files are...convention in the pc world is to install in a foldercalled OPTIONS (not sure where that comes from))

Move the harddrive back to the old laptop.

Boot with floppy.

Run install from harddrive.

[nath]

grrrr the other hdd dont fit in the laptop its too thick i jus bought a hdd
enclosure on ebay
gow do i do it with this? sorry for all the questions and thanks

[gerryf]

put the harddrive in the enclosure, hook it up to a usb enabled computer.

Create a folder on the drive (it will be identified as removable storage.) Call it OPTIONS, put it in the root.

Copy the entire contents of win9x folder to it (not the folder, the contents). Make sure there is a setup.exe file in there, just so we;re talking about the same thing.

Remove the drive from the enclosure

Place back in laptop

Boot laptop with bootdisk

at a:\> prompt, do the following

c:
cd options
setup.exe

sit back and watch windows install.

[nath]

ok did everything you said....running smoothly then replaced the hdd...
at a:/ prompt i pressed c: and it didnt register as a drive, i went all the way through the alphabet lookin for the drive....what am i doin wrong?

[gerryf]

let's recap

The drive that is now in your laptop was temporarily placed in a second computer

This drive was partitioned and formatted in fat32 either previously or while placed in the second computer (not NTFS)

A folder was created and placed on the drive that was going back in the laptop (example: OPTIONS)

You copied the entire contents of the win9x folder from the winme disk to this folder (a number of large files with the .CAB extension as well as assoted others)

You placed this drive back in the laptop

You booted the laptop and it was recognized by BIOS

You rebooted the laptop with a floppy boot disk

You got to an A:\ prompt

you typed
c:
You typed
cd options
you typed
setup.exe

IS that all correct?