EPTI have an old IBM Thinkpad X41 with a blank HDD and no cd-rom drive.
I want to install windows XP on it.
I have a 4gb USB drive and an external laptop enclosure.
My desktop is running windows 7. I have the install cd for windows xp.
Ideas?
Installing XP on an external HD
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
I have an old IBM Thinkpad X41 with a blank HDD and no cd-rom drive. I want to install windows XP on it. I have a 4gb USB drive and an external laptop enclosure. My desktop is running windows 7. I have the install cd for windows xp. Ideas? | ||
micronesia
United States24701 Posts
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blabber
United States4448 Posts
You can also google to find out how to install Windows XP using a USB flash drive | ||
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
On February 01 2010 03:51 blabber wrote: for the way you're doing it, you have to restart your computer, boot from the cd, then install it onto your laptop hard drive from there (don't try to install it within Windows 7). You can also google to find out how to install Windows XP using a USB flash drive I'm using an external enclosure (USB) for the laptop drive. Will windows install even be able to see it? | ||
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Patriot.dlk
Sweden5462 Posts
This is me speaking and naturally I could be wrong or not have all the facts. Good luck | ||
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iceburn
United States303 Posts
you have a laptop that doesn't have a cd tray to have an cd install so you will take your harddrive out of the laptop hook that drive up to a usb external enclosure and attempt to install windows xp to that external through your desktop. okay if that is what you are doing why not, convert your install from the cd to a usb install and install xp via usb straight to your laptop bypassing the need to take your drive out http://komku.blogspot.com/2008/11/install-windows-xp-using-usb-flash-disk.html its fairly easy to do good luck. if i misunderstood disregard. | ||
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
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Cambium
United States16368 Posts
- You have a Laptop with no CD-drive and no OS - You want to install XP on aforementioned laptop - You want to take the HDD out of the laptop, connecting the HDD to your desktop through an external HDD case - You want to install XP on the HDD through your desktop onto the harddrive. Your proposed approach might work, but I don't understand why anyone would bother. The easier solution is to load the XP installation CD onto a USB drive, and install XP directly from the USB drive. Tada | ||
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maga33
United States247 Posts
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
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Dullahan
United States248 Posts
I've used this before and it works great. Note that you'll probably need to run command prompt as an administrator if your desktop is using Vista or Windows 7. The only potential downside is that the root drive of your laptop will be whatever letter it was when you plugged it in to the desktop. That is, if your laptop hard drive was mounted on your desktop as E:, it will still be E: when you put it back in your laptop. I'd expect there ought to be a way to change it back to C: after the install is finished though. | ||
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
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jello24
Canada327 Posts
On February 01 2010 05:41 Biochemist wrote: No luck so far. Can't get laptop to successfully boot off the flash drive, even after formatting and using bootsect to make it bootable. have you tried setting the boot order in your bios? if your flash drive is always booting AFTER your hard drive, you're never gonna be able to run it. | ||
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
On February 01 2010 05:53 jello24 wrote: have you tried setting the boot order in your bios? if your flash drive is always booting AFTER your hard drive, you're never gonna be able to run it. Yeah, it even lets me hit f12 and manually pick which device to boot from, regardless of the boot order. I get either BOOTMGR is missing or NTLDR is missing errors, depending on how I formatted the drive. | ||
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Patriot.dlk
Sweden5462 Posts
edit: Missed your replies sorry about that. You can't use any memory stick iirc it can be a maximum of two GB in size and maybe other limits | ||
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Biochemist
United States1008 Posts
On February 01 2010 06:37 Patriot.dlk wrote: Why won't you install from a memory stick? very weird this is Trying to get laptop to boot from memory stick. | ||
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Patriot.dlk
Sweden5462 Posts
edit: I found this and I hardly read it but seemed legit http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5928902.html edit 2: it's dated way back so you could probably outgoogle me easy | ||
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Dullahan
United States248 Posts
Basically the gist of is, you take out your laptop's hard drive, plug it in to your desktop, and start the setup program on the install disc through command prompt. It'll then copy over the XP setup files to your laptop hard drive, at which point you can put it back in your laptop and boot it up to let it finish installing. | ||
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LxRogue
United States1415 Posts
-Your BIOS needs to support booting from a USB stick -You may need to download a tool/program to make the USB stick bootable | ||
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