[eejacket99]

Hello. I am having the same problems as another user
had in the following post:

http://www.geekstogo...t=0

I have my Laptop's harddrive in a 2.5 case and can
access it via my other computer.

Now I want to add the correct files to the Harddrive to install
windows XP. What are the correct files that I need to
add to the hard drive?

There is no Win9X folder with a setup.exe file in it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

[Advertisements]

For XP, the folder you require from the CD is i386. I think you may also need the files that are in the root as well (setup.exe at least). Unlike the win98 equivalent, the setup.exe in the i386 folder is compressed (ie setup.ex_) so use the one in the root

[Samm]

For XP, the folder you require from the CD is i386. I think you may also need the files that are in the root as well (setup.exe at least). Unlike the win98 equivalent, the setup.exe in the i386 folder is compressed (ie setup.ex_) so use the one in the root

[eejacket99]

Hello Thanks for your help.

I have followed all of the steps, but I can not access the C drive.

(I am having the same problems the other user had).

Can you tell me what I may be doing wrong?

[Samm]

Is the machine that you have the laptop drive connected to via the USB caddy, running win9x or XP?

Also, when you try to access the drive from there, what exactly does windows say about the drive? ie. does it recognise the drive exists, does it recognise the drive size correctly etc.

[eejacket99]

The machine (a desktop) that I am connecting the laptop's
harddrive to (via a USB 2.5 case) is running Windows XP.

So, my desktop will recognize my laptop's harddrive (located
in the 2.5 case). My desktop call's it the "F" drive (and calls
it a "Mass Storage Device").

I am able to copy files to the "F" drive (I copied all of the files
from the i386 folder from my windows XP CD including the
setup.exe from the root. Also, my Windows XP CD is not an
upgrade CD. It is a version for people without windows on their
PC and it is SP2).

The problem occurs once I remove the harddrive from
the 2.5 case and then place it into my laptop.

I place a DOS bootable disk (that I downloaded from
http://www.bootdisk.com/) in my a: drive on my laptop. I get
the DOS prompt. From the DOS prompt, I type C: and
I get an error message "Can not access drive".

So, I reboot the laptop and go into the setup mode (by
typing F2). The bios does recognize my hard drive (or at least
it says there is a hard drive installed).

However, I can not access the C drive from the dos prompt.

Do you know what I may be doing wrong?

Thanks again for your time and help.

Edited by eejacket99, 22 May 2005 - 02:42 PM.

[Samm]

Thank you for that much clearer description, I think I know what the problem might be now.
Is your laptop hard drive formatted as NTFS or FAT32? If its NTFS, a dos boot disk (or win9x boot disk) won't recognise the file format of your drive.

[Supergeek.dcse]

boot of the cd

[Samm]

boot of the cd

He can't

[eejacket99]

Hi, Thanks again for taking the time to help me with my issue.

So maybe I need to reformat the harddrive as a FAT32?

Do you know the best way to do this?

I used this article:

http://www.microsoft...2october07.mspx

To reformat my hard drive. In particular, I used the commands:

gdisk 1 /del /all

to remove all of the existing partitions;

then

gdisk 1 /cre /pri /for /q /y

to create a new partition. This worked fine for a PC that I reformatted
a few weeks earlier, but it may not be working for this laptop (?)

You may already know this, but the "gdisk" program comes from
Norton Ghost and is very handy (but maybe I used it incorrectly
this time).

Thanks again for your time and help.

[Samm]

The gdisk switches look OK but still not sure whether the drive is fat32 or ntfs. The fact that the drive is recognised & can be written to on another system suggests that the partition is set up ok.

Boot the laptop from the floppy with the hard drive installed, run fdisk. Answer Yes to large drive support & NTFS large drive question if it appears. Select option 4 from the menu.
Check what fdisk says under the System heading (it should be either non-dos or FAT32). Also check to see if the drive has been made active (there should be a capital A under Status.

[eejacket99]

OK, so here's what it says after I press 4:

-------------
Current fixed disk drive:1

Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
1 A Non-Dos 1440 2 100 %



Total disk space is 8025 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
---------------

What is strange is that the C drive appears as disk space (because
of the last line) but it doesn't appear in the partition information (only
the A drive is there).

If I go into the BIOS I can see that there is a drive installed.

It says:

Internal HDD 15103MB and it has a blue arrow pointing to it.

If I look at it's properties I see:

Type: Auto
Cylinders: 16383
Heads: 16
Sectors : 63
Maximum Capacity: 15103MB

Multi-Sector Transfers: 16 Sectors
LBA Mode Control: Enabled
32 Bit I/O: Enabled
Transfer Mode: Fast PIO 4
Ultra DMA Mode: Mode 2


Thanks again for your time and help.

[Samm]

Current fixed disk drive:1

Partition  Status      Type          Volume Label    Mbytes  System  Usage
  1              A        Non-Dos                              1440        2        100 %
Total disk space is 8025 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
---------------

OK. According to that, you have a 8GB drive with a single non-dos partition.
I realise the actual drive size however is 15GB in the bios.
The drive is active (status=A) which is good and I assume that it is NTFS. Unfortunately non-dos refers to any file system that it can't recognise, which normally indicates NTFS but can't guarantee it.

I'm confused about the size though. Fdisk reports your 15GB drive as being 8GB in total, this could be explained if something has limited the drive size down to 8GB when partitioning (I vaguely remember some NTFS issue in NT4 that didn't allow partitions greater than 8GB). What I'm really confused about is the partition size being reported as 1440MB and 'System' = 2. 2 Is an invalid value.

Do you have a copy of partiton magic?

[Supergeek.dcse]

sounds like w2000 might have set the drive automaticly just use fdisk get rid of it all setup from fresh you get less prob in the long run

[Supergeek.dcse]

you will need to partions when you try before and copy the files over and ran setup after the reboot it didnt know where to look for the i386 files put them on anothr part will make it easyer and you can tell them where they are

[Samm]

sounds like w2000 might have set the drive automaticly just use fdisk get rid of it all setup from fresh you get less prob in the long run

NO, do not use fdisk for doing this. Fdisk is great provided it recognises the drive correctly. I am not at all convinced it is though, given your fdisk printout. If you use fdisk not to delete & recreate the partition, you risk making the problem worse.