Yes, I have found that one but as you say, no mention of USB. When you flash a BIOS, does it replace the current one completely or does it upgrade. If the latter, then I may need previous upgrades, if the former then I should be OK.

I am registering for Sony support to try to get some form of clarification on the best file but at the moment, I have nothing to lose by going for that file.

BIOS updates erase and rewrite the BIOS and include all previous updates.
What is the problem with the onboard CD drive. Did you see there are firmware updates for these. (ironicly you need update from within Windows)

Also it may be bootable from USB. Not all features are always documented.

Squirrel,

I thought that BIOS updates included everyhthing so hopefully that version will do it.

The on board CD drive is visible in Control Panel, System but doesn't recognise discs. It looks to be a well known problem with the Matsushita drive in these laptops. I have upgraded the firmware and every other fix I can find reference to on the web, but without success. It also looks as though in most cases the only fix was to return it to Sony for a replacement.

Good point about the documentation, I'll give it a try, but wouldn't I see something the the BIOS boot options?

A USB boot option will not necessasarily show as such in the BIOS. Example, I have a laptop that boots from USB, but the only options are: HDD, CD, Network, Other Bootable Device. USB appearantly is considered Other Bootable Device on my system.

If you can find a CD drive they usually are fairly easy to replace.

I feel the need to point out that drive letters are relative to the OS. If you run a dual boot you will notice that the OS you run will almost always say it runs on C:\ when that is impossible for both. It's about perspective of the OS.

Are you sure you are making the drive active? When you install DOS, have you tried unplugging all the other hard drives to help ensure this drive will become that way?

Your method would appear correct, but there may be a problem with it. DOS cannot read ntfs partitions, and this includes the 16-bit installer used in this method. Thus all partitions need to be FAT32 if DOS and the installer is going to be able to read them and use them.

Hi All

William : you are totally off the subject , The CD-ROM /CD-WRITER has trouble reading the CD's . Now how do you expect they get it done with your instructions:

Squirel : Ingore Williams Message, Pass it on to others

Software Sales I hardly see how Williams advice was difficult to follow.

"Are you sure you are making the drive active? When you install DOS, have you tried unplugging all the other hard drives to help ensure this drive will become that way?"

Basically unplug any other drive other than the one that you want to work. Difficulty rating 1 out of 10.

And moaning about one of the best Mods on here because he has told you to stop spamming is stupid. Especially when you moan to other mods about it.

DONT SPAM AGAIN!

There i said it.

Thank you and good night.

OK, I have the laptop back. I have reformatted the drive and partitioned etc. Copied across the I386 folder, this time from an XP pro disc rather than the XP home one I was using before. Same error with the NTLDR.

I copied across the NTLDR file from Logomind, no change. I read the page on boot.ini and whilst I understood most of it, I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, having said that, my new HDD doesn't have a BOOT.INI!

Any more suggestions?

The boot.ini file
 

Curious!

If I follow the instructions in the link I posted before BOOT.INI file for Win2000/XP/2003 on a working XP system - I can see the contents of boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

However, if a follow the instructions and look for the file in the root of C:\ - even though hidden and system files are set to display the file boot.ini still is nowhere to be seen!

If you open notepad and edit this non-existant file i.e. file open-> c:\boot.ini the listing that I pasted above appears???? So the file is there.

I would imagine if you open notepad (or another editor) and paste the lines above and save it to the root of c:\ it would then exist. However I am not sure how the operating system would view it as it wouldn't be a hidden system file. The computer that this was taken from is a single boot of WindowsXP Home.

Also searching for "boot.ini" turns up a file called "boot.ini.backup" in the directory c:\WINDOWS\pss - this was the case on two computers - the first was the XP Home machine that has never had a problem booting and has not had a dual boot or other operating system installed on it. The second was on a computer that dual boots Vista and XP Pro and the backup file was dated 11 Nov 2007 (the date that I was playing around with the dual boot) - The XP Home machine the backup is dated sometime in 2005!

Martin
Not sure if this helps?

In DOS
 

From the root of C:\

dir /ash boot.ini
shows date/time 184 BOOT.INI

and attrib boot.ini
shows SH C:\BOOT.INI

so you could change the attributes to System Hidden

Martin