Laptop Windows Install

[Colton]

I have 10 Dell L400 laptops sitting here that need windows installed on them. Problem is, theres no floppy or CD drives for them, and I dont want to buy the docking station.

I have the adapter to hook up the harddrive to my desktop computer. What i need to do is make the harddrive bootable into DOS so I can copy the windows CD onto the harddrive and just install windows that method. However, I cannot get one of these harddrives to be bootable.

Heres what I've tried:
Making a boot floppy with a floppy emulator (makes my pc think i have a floppy drive). Used mkboot program to copy the bootsector into a file, then copy the bootsector back to the harddrive. Copied the files from the floppy onto the harddrive as well. Pull back in laptop, no boot. FAIL

Removed all harddrives from my PC. Used only the laptop harddrive. Started windows XP install, on the first restart of the install I moved the harddrive into the laptop. FAIL.

Tried finding MSDOS files to put on the harddrive. No luck here either, as all the DOS distrubutions are installers and will only install onto the C: drive. Meaning I'd have to have a floppy drive and a boot disc, then use the installer. Cant do this with no floppy and the emulator only works in windows. FAIL.



Any ideas here?

[HurricaneBob]

I used to use Windows server to do workgroup installs, if it has a nic.
Cant remember if i needed a floppy to do that though. Been awhile.

[tornandfrayed]

I would get a USB dvd drive for a couple bucks install one then use acronis or something like it to mirror the others. I assume that these are all the same. if yes then the mirror should work well you juts have to change the PC name and credentials... Aside from that it will be a pain in the ass...

[Ron]

You'll need:
USB stick
Ethernet crossover cable or a ethernet hub/switch
Ethernet driver for the laptop

- Make the USB stick bootable - http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
- Put the network driver on the USB stick.
- Boot laptop from USB stick.
- Connect the laptop to your desktop via ethernet.
- Put operating system DVD/CD into desktop DVD/CD drive.
- Copy contents of i386 folder from DVD/CD to laptop hard drive.
- Run Windows setup from the laptop hard drive.

Or save yourself a lot of stress by just doing as Dave said and get a USB DVD/CD drive.

[ToonaRockGuy]

Use one of these...

[floodcitybrass]

Try the approach of making 2 partitinos.

Connect your Laptop HD to the xp computer
Goto computer management, Disk Management
Repartion the Laptop drive into 2 sections. (c and d relative to the laptop hd)
Format them with FAT not ntfs.
Copy i386 files do the 2nd partition.
Make the first partition bootable.

Reboot
start install.
Choose to not to repartion the drives when it asks. Install to c leaving d intact with i386 files.

[Colton]

@ Ron: I dont have a damned jump drive that works. Every single one I've ever bought has kicked the bucket on me, and I've given up on them.



@ Floodcitybrass: This is pretty much what I've been trying, but theres one big problem, this part right here....

Make the first partition bootable.

Thats where im stuck. Otherwise these damn lappies would be runnin.

[floodcitybrass]

Did you try to manually copy boot.ini, ntdetect, and ntdlr from c: to your laptop hd?

[Colton]

Did you try to manually copy boot.ini, ntdetect, and ntdlr from c: to your laptop hd?

I'll try that after I take a nap to kill this hangover. Two friends and I killed two cases last night. Ugh.

Didnt really think to try that, from what I understood there needs to be an actual bootsector so the laptop knows what to read on boot.

[f.sciarrillo]

did you fix this yet ???

What you could try is to make your pen drive bootable - in fact, you may not even have to make it bootable. copy the contents of the windows cd to the pen drive, then install it that way. It might work. In theory it should work anyhow ...

Of course them being dell, you should be able to go into bios and choose the pen drive as a boot option ...

[lonewolf]

I would get a USB dvd drive for a couple bucks install one then use acronis or something like it to mirror the others. I assume that these are all the same. if yes then the mirror should work well you juts have to change the PC name and credentials... Aside from that it will be a pain in the ass...

If time = money, this is the easiest, cheapest solution. Make sure the DVD drive is bootable and shows up in BIOS under boot order and make it the 1st bootable device.

Normally, this situation calls for a boot from lan with the laptop disk images on a server usng Norton Ghost or similar disk image program, but it doesn't sound like you have the resources available.

Other ideas:

Connect the laptop drive to a pc and format it with the "copy system files" option. (unfortunately, WinVista doesn't seem to support this anymore)

Or, you could connect it to an old Win9x computer, format the laptop drive with FAT32, go to a command prompt and type:

sys x: where x is the drive letter of the laptop drive

Or, you could boot the pc up with DOS install disks and install it on the laptop drive, reboot and copy the install disk contents to the laptop drive.

In these cases, you may want (need?) to make a small partition for the initial bootup O/S on the laptop drive.

Once you have a bootable disk, then copy the install disk to that drive and try using it to boot and install on a laptop.

If you do this often, you may want to consider getting Norton Ghost or a similar disk image system.

[Colton]

Okay, lotsa ideas so far... looks like ill be waiting till next time Meyach and I jam, hes got a USB cd drive that'll probably do the trick.

@ f.sciarrillo: I have no jump drives
@ lonewolf: or floppy drives... Also in XP I cant format the harddrive with the system files, grayed out =/ (this was the first idea). Also dont have a win9x computer. Some of the laptops with the updated bios have a 3com network boot agent. /shrug on how to use that thing... all the guides ive found online seem too damn involved... I even tried to just plain ghost a fresh XP install, hoping having a pentium in the desktop and with the laptops being pentium, it might not crash... hah, fail.
@ floodcitybrass: tried copying those files, epic fail

So yeah... Mitch, get your butt over here =)