windoes xp booting problem
 

i have compaq nx 6120 laptop. initially it had only c drive. i partitioned it into two using partition magic. Then i installed the windows xp professional operating system in newly created d drive and then deleted entire c drive. now the system shows " non system disk error" when i try to boot. the problem is that my laptop's cd drive is not functional and it also does not have flopy drive. i tried booting it with usb drive but i dont know the procedure. now the system is just not booting and keeps on showing non system disk error.

please help to solve this problem.

Amit

The Problem might be because C-drive generally contains the master boot record. When you switch on the PC, select the option to boot from CD drive. That can be done by either entering BIOS and making the change or there is a direct key shortcut (F2/F10/F12) depending on ur PC.
This will allow you to boot from a CD.
Now boot from an XP disk, run a system repair. I think this will do the job.

Please let me know what happens

saumitra

as i said earlier, my cd drive is damaged and is not working. that is why i want to boot and install xp from usb drive

amit

It's not going to happen. You will have to get a new cd rom drive installed in the laptop.

Win XP has to be installed to the C: drive as saumi has stated regarding the the mbf as well...

I found some articles regarding booting xp from USB and many users have reported success. yesterday, i made the windows 98 bootable USB drive using famous HP utility. After plugging in the usb drive and booting, the command prompt appears ( c:\).Then i try to install xp from USB drive ( xp dump copied on it) and the blue xp set up screen appears. But after few steps it says, that u need smart drive to proceed. Now i dont what it meant by smart drive.

I am stuck at that.

Amit

Have you Googled for smart drive?

Here's a Microsoft KB article to help you on your way... SMARTDrive and 32-Bit Disk Access