Re: laptop - new HD - no CD or floppy drive
- From: "Pegasus \(MVP\)" <I.can@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 23:41:34 +0200
"JohnB" <jbrigan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23YqDmeTBIHA.1208@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here's my predicament; I have an older laptop, an Evo 410c. This is one
of those very light, small laptops. No built-in floppy or CD drive. The
hard drive failed, and I bought a new drive. Since I don't have a CD
drive to boot from, I took a new HD, connected it to a tower PC with one
of those adapters that lets you connect a 3.5" laptop drive to the PC's
IDE connector. And loaded XP on it.
After putting the new HD in the laptop, it will not boot to Windows. The
BIOS diags recognize the drive and it passes all tests.
The message I get at bootup is: "A disk read error occurred - Press
Alt-Ctrl-Del to restart".
I suspect that the problem is; the drivers XP loaded for the PC IDE
controller don't work for the IDE controller that's in the laptop, and
therefore it doesn't see the HD.
I have been told that there is an external device - like a docking
station - that Compaq made for this, called a Mult-Bay. Trouble is, the
ones that I've found on the internet run about $110. I would really like
to get this fixed without putting 110 bucks into a 5 year old laptop.
I tried a generic, portable USB CD drive. They don't work. There's
something weird about the USB ports on this laptop, they don't get enough
power from a standard USB portable drive. The Multi-bay has another pin
that gives the laptop the necessary power.
Is there any other way to get this new HD with XP on it, to boot on the
laptop? I suspect that I'm SOL.
Thanks.
You're on the right track but you need to make some adjustments:
1. Connect the new disk to the desktop PC.
2. Partition & format it like so:
First partition: 20 GBytes FAT32
Second partition: NTFS or FAT32.
3. Boot the desktop with a Win98 boot disk (www.bootdisk.com).
Make sure that smartdrv.exe is on that disk.
4. Run this command: sys c:. ((assuming that E: is
the first partition on the new disk)
5. Copy a:\smartdrv.exe to c:\.
6. Boot the desktop into WinXP.
7. Copy your WinXP CD to E:\i386 (assuming that E: is
the first partition on the new disk).
8. Install the new disk on the laptop. It should now boot into DOS.
9. Run smartdrv.exe.
10. Run this command to start the installation of Windows:
c:\i386\winnt
11. When finished, convert drive C to NTFS if desired.
With an ultraslim laptop like yours you must take extra precautions
to protect yourself against similar mishaps in future. Get yourself
a copy of an imaging program (e.g. Acronis TrueImage), then create
an image of drive C: and store it on drive D:. The next step is to
copy that image file to an independent medium so that you can
restore it if the disk should fail again (which, of course, it won't!).
.
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