Thanks.
This tutorial finally made the imposible. Format a laptop hard drive in my Sony Vaio PCG-SR17 that now is running windows XP
thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!

My thoughts exactly. XP is running smoothly on an HP Pavilion ze4900.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Excellent solution thank you
 

I would like to thank William and all the other contributors on this thread for an excellent solution to what seemed to me to be an unsolveable problem. After following the tuto and the various replies concerning some of the setbacks I experienced during my attempt I have finally managed to reinstall the Windows XP OS back to my dinosaur Acer 341T.
If I may I would care to add a note.The major setback I encountered personally was getting the DOS ver 7.10 to install onto the formatted laptop HDD,eventually after a couple of failed attempts with cd's(would run but not give installation prompt) I wrote the DOS ver 7.10 contents to a new floppy disc using winimage and booted the host desktop with the laptop's HDD still in slave mode on IDE 1 channel 2 with the master HDD on the desktop disconnected and DOS ver 7.10 started to install.

Many thanks again and keep up the good work
Regards .
Stuart.

For people who want a no-hassle way to remove the dual boot screen:

1. Right click My Computer.
2. Open the Advanced tab.
3. In Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Select your default operating system from the drop down menu.
5. Find the "Time to Display Operating Systems" box. Uncheck it.
6. Done!

Dell L400 No Floppy Or Cd Drive
 

hello I am new here so please correct me if I make a mistake but would like to say a big thanks to William for his tutorial as it helped me get my brother-in-laws Dell up and running again after someone had deleted o/s files on his laptop. Thanks once again:)

~~wonderful Tutorial~~
 

Subject: Keyboard not working in XP install, but works fine in DOS

Okay so I did everything as stated in the tutorial, and I just can't get my keyboard to work on my Toshiba Portege 3500.

BIOS Setting for USB Keyboard and Mouse are 'Enabled'

The exact state of the XP Tablet install I am stuck in is when the installation asks where the files are stored.

Also, while in the installation the keys' lights up (i.e. caps, fn, num etc)

Any advice??

Thanks,

I have the same problem
 

I tried to format my hardrive in a DELL inspiron and then placed it in my DELL C400 but all I get after the bios is a black screen. any help would be great!

A shot in the dark here,hope it helps!
Is this after you have entered at the prompt in DOS> run smartdrv.exe (type C:\smartdrv.exe at command prompt) > (type C:\I386\winnt.exe)and then have a windows prompt line asking for the directory? If thats the case press the enter key and the installation should continue.

Dear william thnx for very nice tutorial. I hv toshiba laptop where i can install 6 floppy, but when it asks for installation win xp, i dont found external cd drive for further installation of xp, help plz.

my laptop works with floppy plz, thnx in advance

You still need a cdrom drive to install Win XP, do you have a one connected externally yet...

i hv connected cd drive externealy, but it doent work, i think its problem with toshiba

For Toshiba owners
 

Hello and thanks for this great guide which is the best gift ever for me! :)
Have a Toshiba s1410-604 and this guide was the only way to make my laptop work!

1). I removed the toshiba HDD and placed in in an external case. (2.5 usb external which costs only 8-10Euros).
2). I connected the toshiba HDD to my desktop and formatted as the guide describes.
3). Burned the dos 7 iso to my desktop. Removed the HDD and put it on another laptop toshiba A40 ( yeah i have 2 lol ) and installed dos 7.
4). Connected the toshiba HDD to my desktop again and copied the i386 folder in 3 minutes. (so as to spend less time copying).
5). Placed the toshiba HDD back to the no drive, no cd-rom laptop and ran c:\i386\winnt.exe and in 15min had windows installed on this toshiba 1410-604 :)

Well guys if you own a toshiba laptop with no cdr dvd-r, this guide is the only way. With the 6 pack microsoft install disks it won't work cause you don't have a cd dvd rom, and the usb won't function unless windows installed.

SO read this guide step by step and give your toshiba laptop a real xp life as it deserves.

Ps: if you 've bought another cd dvd r cause your toshiba one wasn't working, the solution to make it work is to connect pin 47 and pin 45 together. Tried it with sony nec optiarc and worked great!


My friend... THANK you soooo much for this guide. !!!! :) :) :)
Greetings from Greece
Vangelis

program too big to fit into memory error
 

hi guys,

i installed dos 7.1 on one partition and the i386 folder on another, the problem is when i try to execute winnt.exe, i get this error message on my toshiba laptop 5005-s507

"program too big to fit in memory"

i've tried to use memmaker to increase it but it doesnt make sense.

Any ideas on why i am getting this error?

thanks

hi william

This is the best tutorial i have encountered thanks man your number one.

Windows xp pro loads and locks on startup screen
 

Windows will load the files, but it locks up at the setup is starting windows screen. Reformat and and recopy do nothing. Any ideas?


btw: dos 7.1 worked great thanks.

anytime that you are installing the operating system...remove any unneccessary hardware. especially if it isn't working to begin with!

Thanks for the guide. I was actualy looking for something else to boot windows XP without the CD ROM. I used HirensBoot Disk 9.5 to boot through DOS then just followed your guide from page 5. Thanks for the help :)

tnx
 

tutorials best! couldn't be any better!

tnx again!:clap2:

Thanks a lot!
That really solved the "NTLDR is missing issue".

dos issues
 

cant seem to get dos 7.1 to do anything let alone install. kinda stuck here. trying to do this step by step, minus Im using a usb hdd enclosure for my old laptop hdd bc I dont have a desktop, just a vista lappy.
:Cry:
hints?
help?

K

Using Tutorial for Windows 2000 Professional Install
 

Hi all,
I'm attempting to install Windows 2000 Professional using this tutorial on a pos (point of sale, a type of computer with the screen integrated, usually used for shop tills, stock keeping etc...) Posiflex with a TP6000 Motherboard, 512 Mb Ram, Celeron 1.2Ghz Processor, Samsung 80Gb Hard drive with 3 partitions all Fat32.C:\ partition is 16Gb.
I have got as far as the Networking Settings stage, whether Typical Settings Or Custom Settings is selected. Whichever option is chosen, even choosing Custom Settings and deselecting the 3 options like Tcp/ip etc..., all result in the progress bar showing "Completing configuration of distributed transaction coordinator..." and then the screen goes black followed by the Pc restarting itself to go through the whole F6 if you need to install additional drivers bit and on to the point where it restarts itself again.
I hope I have explained my problem in an understandable way.
Any help will be much appreciated.Thanks to all the info/advice posted that have enabled me to get even this far.

Regards, plswrk

Hi Again,
managed to finish installing Windows 2000, and running fine:sbiggrin:
William Wilson came up with the solutions in previous posts that worked for me.Just made a couple of changes to these two bits of advice for my setup:

1. William_Wilson on 05-11-2007, 01:50 PM

you could try a modification to the install, as i have come to like better:
-format the drive, and partition it with a small 500mb parition on the front of the drive. copy the i386 folder to it and then install dos to it as well. This will keep the install folders separate from the actual installation which will be on D:\ now.
This method also allows you to re-install without removing your drive again.

As I wanted to be very sure that Win2K would fit I made my partition 845mb.


2. Baked_Bean
When you copy the i386 folder use this DOS command ......
xcopy d:\i386 c:\i386 /s/e
where d:\ is the cdrom drive and c:\ is the hdd. The switches at the end will ensure that ALL folders will be copied, regardless.

Here, I thought I'd see if this would work with the command prompt from within XP Professional, rather than dos 7.1 (I'm very much a dos newbie), and it did, fantastic!


Thank you very much William:thumb:

install windows xp without floppy or cd drives
 

I was leafing through the different forums, and I wonder if this procedure would work for a toshiba portege 3500? This model is a tablet pc without a cd-rom drive nor a floppy drive.

will this work on the toshiba 3500 tablet pc

There is no reason why it wouldn't work, just check the drive type: IDE or SATA. The adapter is only needed for IDE drives since the pin count is different on the 2 varieties of these hard drives, while the SATA type use the exact same connectors in both models. As long as there is a copy of the OS on the drive and DOS can boot, it will work for any laptop.

On looking up the drive type, it does appear that the toshiba 3500 tablet uses an ATA-100 type hard drive and this should be very easy to setup, just make sure you are using a desktop with SATA connectors.

dear William ....... I read several times you post .... but , but only one question : re-instal without cd or floppy ??? what do you need ??? usb support .... some people on the site seid : impossible ...well now I am confuged.... sorry you did well but ??? please tell me how ?? thx :icon_neutral: :icon_neutral:

Have you read the tutorial these comments are on? For an IDE laptop drive you need a converter, described and photographed in the tutorial, and for an ATA laptop drive you can use any SATA capable desktop computer.
If your laptop supports booting from a usb device (this can be determined in the boot order in your BIOS) then you can use a thumb drive or usb CD drive, otherwise removing the hard drive and installing the OS/files outlined in the tutorial is about the easiest way.

Very good tutorial, it saved the day. Thank you very much :)

this what i did

put laptop hhd into desktop pc
install dos
change back to desktop pc and put in smart.drv and i386 files in laptop hhd
moved laptop hhd back into laptop
installed windows
reboot

!!!!@@@@ I GET THIS ERROR! @@@@!!!!

NTLDR IS MISSING! <----- WTF!!!

HOW DO I RESOLVE THIS? THIS IS A BRAND NEW XP PRO CD!!!

yo sum 1 help me pls!
 

it is a dell latitude c400

William,
I'm trying to re-install WinXP on a Toshiba Portege 3500. I've followed your directions carefully, DOS 7.1 went in with no hitch, copied the I386 and Smartdrv.exe onto the drive, put the drive back into the tablet, and it booted up in DOS just fine. I did the installation start, but when the tablet reboots to continue installing WinXP, it says "Disk error, press any key to restart." I tried that a few times, with the same result. Any ideas? Thanks for your attention and any help you may be able to render!

Re: Install Windows XP without floppy or cd drives
 

Hi, I am tryin to install XP on my laptop, i bought an external cd drive but the problem i'm havin is with the SATA native mode. its a Gateway MX1023 Notebook, I have been tryin to disbale it but i cant seem to find a disbale option in the bios, secondly i download the drivers for the SATA controller 4rm Gateways site copied to the floppy did the F6 during installation but i still get the F3 quit error msg screen saying no hard is found. it there another way around this. If I could probably disable the SATA mode I am pretty sure it'll work.

Any ideas?

If it is native then it should not require the installation of the third party (F6). Native hardware is tagged so as to be recognizable from the CD and the drivers installed automatically. Try to install the operating system by ignoring the F6 prompt and see what happens.

If it installs then go back later and replace the controller driver with the gateway one through the regular method of motherboard driver installations....note....some gateways will need help in installing drivers and they have a tool to help.

I loved this tutorial, but I changed it up a bit (because I was being cheap)

What I did was I got my XP files (I used some disc I had sitting on my desk with SP3, and put the files on a flash drive), an MS-Dos 7.10 disc, a Knoppix disc (probably any live linux distrib would work).

I was fixing my friend's Fujitsu Lifebook Tablet, with my Gateway Laptop.

I basically just did everything in the tutorial, just with the use of Knoppix to format to FAT32 and copy the files over from my flash drive.

It was annoying, but at least I saved money :)