How To Boot From A Usd External Cd Drive

[smo]

My Dell 5100 laptop's internal CD drive gave up the ghost eons ago. I've been getting by swimmingly with a USB external CD/DVD drive. Last night I did a Window restore and the laptop could not boot up. HOw do I get the machine to boot up from the CD drive in order to reinstall Window XP. The system emergency boot procedure gives me a choice to boot up from floppy, CD internal, or "on-line" NIC, but says nothing about USB device. What to do? Help !!!

Thanks,

smo

[monty]

If you're lucky, you can choose to boot from a usb device in the bios setup.

However if you don't get the option during boot, the chances are you're not going to find it in setup either.

This option got only included in the last couple of years with the popularity of usb devices, if your laptop is older you're probably out of luck...

Another posibility would be to boot in DOS from a floppy, but I'm not sure your usb cd drive will be visible...

[francois]

My Dell 5100 laptop's internal CD drive gave up the ghost eons ago. I've been getting by swimmingly with a USB external CD/DVD drive. Last night I did a Window restore and the laptop could not boot up. HOw do I get the machine to boot up from the CD drive in order to reinstall Window XP. The system emergency boot procedure gives me a choice to boot up from floppy, CD internal, or "on-line" NIC, but says nothing about USB device. What to do? Help !!! 

Thanks,

smo

hi'

get in the bios and set as order for boot, other device and no floppy or cd rom, hdo, the first one has to be external

you can boot from it if it shows up in the first menu along with other hdd and cdrom, standard config ...

francois

[smo]

If you're lucky, you can choose to boot from a usb device in the bios setup.

However if you don't get the option during boot, the chances are you're not going to find it in setup either.

This option got only included in the last couple of years with the popularity of usb devices, if your laptop is older you're probably out of luck...

Another posibility would be to boot in DOS from a floppy, but I'm not sure your usb cd drive will be visible...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, mine is an older model thus no USB boot option

However there is "on-board NIC" boot option. Can this one be of any use? The laptop was networking with my desktop, does that mean the desktop could be of some help in getting the laptop up and running?

Any idea?

Thanks,

smo

[francois]

hi'

did you try to flash your bios?

you may get this option along with the improvement of the circuit code

1.you need to know exactly what brand and number etc ..

2.download the bios(small file) from mb website or laptop site.

3.uncompress this file on a floppy and follow the instruction(booklet) given with your laptop, it's necessary to know which procedure to follow to avoid mistake, every laptop has it's own routine

depends on the MB ..

be very careful that your com is plugged on a safe electric power source ...

any small invisible power shortage or overload during the flashing procedure and you're done!

hope it can help a bit

francois

[Mali_in_CM]

The NIC boot won't help.

You need a DOS floppy, like w98se, and it needs USB drivers and MSCDEX.

[Ken]

Don't know if this will help or not but you can download an "MS-DOS USB Boot-disk" from MS-DOS USB Bootdisk. You will need to click on the download for "Dos-usb.exe" and then after the download open the file and go thru the "extraction" process, then open the batch file "mkdisk.bat" which will make the bootable diskette.

I am able to boot to my external USB hard drive but not sure about an external CD Drive. May or may not work. If it does work then you could download a Windows Boot disk that contains fdisk (among a bunch of other stuff). Then, boot up with the MS DOS USB disk, insert the Windows Boot disk and using fdisk partition and format your hard drive, then load the Windows "Winnt" files from your CD Drive to the C Drive. Maybe it could work for you....then again maybe not. Expermenting might be in order. You can download a bootable windows file for a diskette at Freepctech. This will have the fdisk command on it. I used the file "MS Windows XP System setup disk" but there are many others to choose from.

Good luck, may need it. But it did work for me as far as the external usb hard drive.

[smo]

Don't know if this will help or not but you can download an "MS-DOS USB Boot-disk" from MS-DOS USB Bootdisk.  You will need to click on the download for "Dos-usb.exe" and then after the download open the file and go thru the "extraction" process, then open the batch file "mkdisk.bat" which will make the bootable diskette.

I am able to boot to my external USB hard drive but not sure about an external CD Drive.  May or may not work.  If it does work then you could download a Windows Boot disk that contains fdisk (among a bunch of other stuff).  Then, boot up with the MS DOS USB disk, insert the Windows Boot disk and using fdisk partition and format your hard drive, then load the Windows "Winnt" files from your CD Drive to the C Drive.  Maybe it could work for you....then again maybe not.  Expermenting might be in order. You can download a bootable windows file for a diskette at Freepctech.  This will have the fdisk command on it.  I used the file "MS Windows XP System setup disk" but there are many others to choose from.

Good luck, may need it. But it did work for me as far as the external usb hard drive.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The laptop doesn't have a floppy - I have stopped using floppies decades ago. Right now I'm bidding on an internal CD drive from eBay.... they're out there but expensive though, run 50 - 60 bucks!

Thanks for all the advice so far,

smo

[francois]

Don't know if this will help or not but you can download an "MS-DOS USB Boot-disk" from MS-DOS USB Bootdisk.  You will need to click on the download for "Dos-usb.exe" and then after the download open the file and go thru the "extraction" process, then open the batch file "mkdisk.bat" which will make the bootable diskette.

I am able to boot to my external USB hard drive but not sure about an external CD Drive.  May or may not work.  If it does work then you could download a Windows Boot disk that contains fdisk (among a bunch of other stuff).  Then, boot up with the MS DOS USB disk, insert the Windows Boot disk and using fdisk partition and format your hard drive, then load the Windows "Winnt" files from your CD Drive to the C Drive.  Maybe it could work for you....then again maybe not.  Expermenting might be in order. You can download a bootable windows file for a diskette at Freepctech.  This will have the fdisk command on it.  I used the file "MS Windows XP System setup disk" but there are many others to choose from.

Good luck, may need it. But it did work for me as far as the external usb hard drive.

The laptop doesn't have a floppy - I have stopped using floppies decades ago. Right now I'm bidding on an internal CD drive from eBay.... they're out there but expensive though, run 50 - 60 bucks!

Thanks for all the advice so far,

smo

hi'

so, do as I said, download the latest bios for your motherboard, extract the content of the archive in a folder and burn it on a cd.

boot from cd and follow instruction on screen.

just be aware of something, you can't jump from number 1 to number 5 straight, so if you see at boot that the number is 1, download them all from 2 to 5 and repeat the procedure until you are on the latest bios, starting the upgrade at number 1 to 2.

you need to make a clean reboot after each flashing, then reboot again from cd and so on, you'll need to go through the bios settings once in the beginning, set the cd as first

device to boot and hhd0 as number2, when there is no cd in the pc reboot on the hdd.

so, after flashing procedure before to reboot, take the cd out

francois

[Sunny Valentine]

Francois, if only he could boot from (external) CD he would not need to update the Bios .....

As I see it, it is a tough luck situation.

Only thing that comes to my mind would be:

Try to get the Harddisk out of the Notebook.

Get an Adapter for 2,5 inch Harddisks to install in regular PCs.

Get access to a Pc, install the Notebook Harddisk as secondary master.

Format the Notebook HD, and make it Bootable.

Copy all the I386 Folder of your XP CD to the Harddisk.

Reinstall the Harddisk in your Notebook.

Now it should boot from the Harddisk, but only to a DOs-like prompt.

enter CD I386

Enter Setup, and hope for the best!

Sunny

[francois]

hi'

so, I missed that every device he had was ext

so, in this case, yes take the hdd out to format it and prepare it for a new install, could be a good idea to make a partition for this cd:i386, one gb should be enough.

to do this ask someone who already done it once with success, some techies are skilled

francois