I have an old toshiba pIII laptop with a broken cd-drive. I have been trying
to install xp on it, so what i did was remove the hard drive, hook it up to
another computer, format using fat32, and copy the i386 folder from the cd.
then i put it back into the laptop, booted using a win98 boot disk with
smartdrv added on. i ran smartdrv, then winnt.exe from the i386 folder.
installation proceeds as normal, and setup files are copied. but upon
reboot, the computer refuses to boot from the hard drive. it will only boot
from the floppy. if i boot into dos however, i can see the drive just fine.
i have tried everything including using an external usb cdrom drive with usb
drivers in dos. i also tried upgrading and downgrading the bios. i even
tried booting from the 6-disk xp boot disk set, but when installation loads,
it asks for the cd. i'm lost, PLEASE help.

A couple of things to try:
1. boot from your Win98 floppy and run - fdisk /mbr
2. create a boot disk for Windows XP
format a floppy disk and copy the following files from a working XP
system (Home/Pro) that boots from "C"
boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntldr (once the system has booted, you can copy
these files to the root of "C"


"Hari" <hari.trivedi@bme.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:eb2t85$36k$1@news-int.gatech.edu...

A couple of things to try:
1. boot from your Win98 floppy and run - fdisk /mbr
2. create a boot disk for Windows XP
format a floppy disk and copy the following files from a working XP
system (Home/Pro) that boots from "C"
boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntldr (once the system has booted, you can copy
these files to the root of "C"


"Hari" <hari.trivedi@bme.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:eb2t85$36k$1@news-int.gatech.edu...

"Hari" <hari.trivedi@bme.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:eb2t85$36k$1@news-int.gatech.edu...
Did you set the hard drive as the first boot device in the BIOS?

"Hari" <hari.trivedi@bme.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:eb2t85$36k$1@news-int.gatech.edu...
Did you set the hard drive as the first boot device in the BIOS?

i figured it out. i had to set the partition as the primary dos partition
using fdisk. then everything worked. man i spent 5 hours....


"Hari" <hari.trivedi@bme.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:eb2t85$36k$1@news-int.gatech.edu...

i figured it out. i had to set the partition as the primary dos partition
using fdisk. then everything worked. man i spent 5 hours....


"Hari" <hari.trivedi@bme.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:eb2t85$36k$1@news-int.gatech.edu...

Hari wrote:
You are now an expert!

Q

Hari wrote:
You are now an expert!

Q

I presume that you did remove the floppy diskette from the floppy drive
after the end of the first pass, when it goes to reboot? If no, you
need to do that.


Hari wrote:

I presume that you did remove the floppy diskette from the floppy drive
after the end of the first pass, when it goes to reboot? If no, you
need to do that.


Hari wrote:

Hari wrote:
*** One of the problems with the Windoze generation is lack of DOS
knowledge. *Everyone* should be taught basic DOS, then at least
some advanced DOS.

With the latter, most Windoze tedium can be removed through using DOS
or a DOS emulator. For myself, I discovered I could remove *all* Windoze
tedium by deleting it and upgrading to DOS only. (-:


Richard Bonner
http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/

Hari wrote:
*** One of the problems with the Windoze generation is lack of DOS
knowledge. *Everyone* should be taught basic DOS, then at least
some advanced DOS.

With the latter, most Windoze tedium can be removed through using DOS
or a DOS emulator. For myself, I discovered I could remove *all* Windoze
tedium by deleting it and upgrading to DOS only. (-:


Richard Bonner
http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/

Richard Bonner wrote:

DOS doesn't exist anymore, why would someone starting out today have any
reason to learn it? It can't do anything with NTFS so about all it can do
is boot the machine.

"upgrading to DOS only" is fine if you don't actually want to _do_ anything.
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Richard Bonner wrote:

DOS doesn't exist anymore, why would someone starting out today have any
reason to learn it? It can't do anything with NTFS so about all it can do
is boot the machine.

"upgrading to DOS only" is fine if you don't actually want to _do_ anything.
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Defintion of an expert is ex= hasbeen spurt = drip under pressure!

Defintion of an expert is ex= hasbeen spurt = drip under pressure!

J. Clarke wrote:
*** Untrue, J. You are probably thinking of the old Microsoft DOS. The
latest versions from others have come out just in the past few years, and
the latest updates are from 2006.


*** Speed, efficiency, simplicity, non-resource hog to get the same
results as with other operating systems, etc. Even in concert with those
other operating systems, it can be used to automate any computer chore and
run the GUI without the tedium of point & click.


*** There are NTFS drivers for DOS. Regardless, not all operating
systems are on NTFS. Even if they switched, how long would it be
before Microsoft changed that, too? The move today is to ISO file
standards. Microsoft can either adopt/adhere to them or lose even more of
its market share.


*** Untrue. I do *every* operation on my business and personal
computers using *only* DOS. I have USB capability and graphic Internet
(soon to be high-speed, wireless). My company and personal websites are
designed strictly via DOS including all graphics work; company
advertising in our showroom is done exclusively on DOS machines running
DOS software; the advertisements themselves are done using DOS graphic
software, and on, and on.

My systems at ~ 500 MHz also run *way* faster than 2.4 GHz systems
running XP bloatware.


Here's a website with common DOS fallacies and my answers:

http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/DOS-Fal.html

Richard Bonner
http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/

J. Clarke wrote:
*** Untrue, J. You are probably thinking of the old Microsoft DOS. The
latest versions from others have come out just in the past few years, and
the latest updates are from 2006.


*** Speed, efficiency, simplicity, non-resource hog to get the same
results as with other operating systems, etc. Even in concert with those
other operating systems, it can be used to automate any computer chore and
run the GUI without the tedium of point & click.


*** There are NTFS drivers for DOS. Regardless, not all operating
systems are on NTFS. Even if they switched, how long would it be
before Microsoft changed that, too? The move today is to ISO file
standards. Microsoft can either adopt/adhere to them or lose even more of
its market share.


*** Untrue. I do *every* operation on my business and personal
computers using *only* DOS. I have USB capability and graphic Internet
(soon to be high-speed, wireless). My company and personal websites are
designed strictly via DOS including all graphics work; company
advertising in our showroom is done exclusively on DOS machines running
DOS software; the advertisements themselves are done using DOS graphic
software, and on, and on.

My systems at ~ 500 MHz also run *way* faster than 2.4 GHz systems
running XP bloatware.


Here's a website with common DOS fallacies and my answers:

http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/DOS-Fal.html

Richard Bonner
http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/