i bought a laptop"Latitude C400" from a garage sale it has no OS and no cd rom and no floppyive tried putting the hd in my desktop with an adaptor i bought from frys.. it cant see the drive... how can i install an os on that drive
thanxxxxxx.
i bought a laptop"Latitude C400" from a garage sale it has no OS and no cd rom and no floppy
thanxxxxxx.
:grab:
You'll need a laptop hard drive. Check newegg.com and mwave.com for some 2.5in. drives.
-Zack
Make sure it's for laptops, not a 3.5in. desktop drive.Originally posted by cph21
i have an extra hd 30 gig
Try booting a win98 start=up disk and see if it's found in DOS,if yes,format,partition and load OS.
All that is gold does not glitter,not all those who wander are lost ....
I dont know what you have planned for this lappy but I would think that you are going to NEED a CD drive for it. I think if it were me I would look into getting a CD Drive so you can install the OS and about everything else that you will need/want on it.
you may need to FDISK the drive, a company I use to work for would use FDISK to remove all partitions from drives and would rarely use it to recreate a partition prior to releasing them for sale.
kayNan
A friend will help you move.
A REAL freind will help you move the bodies.
How is he going to FDISK it or do anything else to it with no floppy or CD drive. If his desktop cant see the lappy hard drive and there is no floppy to boot with a start up disk and no OS on the drive I dont see how he can do anything with it. Am I missing something or doesn't he need a floppy or CD drive to be able to load something on to the HDD?
yes he does need either a floppy, or CD, or additional HDD w/FDISK on it. But he said he had an adapter is it not being seen by even the BIOS???
Have you checked with dell on obtaining floppy drive or cd drive.
Maybe you can find an external cdrom or floppy drive, I know IBM had several models that had no drive bays and everything was connected externally except the HDD?
I have a dell c400 laptop
it has a cd and a floppy
can only use one at a time
when i use the boot disk it look for a cd rom and when it does
not see it it does not load cd driver
so i copy the os to the hd and when i type setup it acks as if its going to install and then hangs when it says its copying files needed to start windows
can you boot to the cd rom???
have u tried copying the floppy to the HDD and basically allowing the HDD to boot the CDROM?
does the floppy boot disk you are using contain a file called sys, if so sys c: should allow it to boot
ok try this
FDISK the HDD delete any existing partitions and the create a new partition.
Format the drive with the /s option
Copy the entire contents of the Floppy boot disk to the HDD. Then at a dos prompt edit both the Autoexec.bat file and the Config.sys file looking for any references to "A:\" and change them to "C:\" then try booting with the CDROM plugged in instead.
If that does not work, contact DELL they probably have a recovery CD that will load the standard load. If not you have a really cool paper weight ; )....might could try loading a laptop HDD from a desktop system, or you may just have a bad HDD???
i tried that eariler,,about the autoexec.bat and sys files
read it somewhere else.... it still didnt work... thanx
if there is other input please feel free
if you do a dir on c: at the dos prompt does it list any files?
OK let me make sure I have all this right
1. If you boot using the CDROM you get an invalid system disk error, correct?
2. You can boot from the floppy and see all files on the HDD, correct?
3. What does it say when you sys C: using the floppy a: prompt?
OK so you are unable to sys the drive....what OS are u trying to load?
ok on boot to your boot disk....type FORMAT C: /S at the A:\ prompt (the /S option transfers the system files) then do the copy of the floppy disk files and changes to autoexec.bat and config.sys (a - c) and retry it.....I have loaded 98 several times that way but it will also work if you copy all the files in the WIN98 Directory to the C: drive and run setup from C: .... If you are unable to sys or copy those files to C: then either your HD is bad or full, or u may have a lose connection...
last night i formated before i could read ur post is there any way i can put the sys files on after i format the drive or should i done it while i was format
ing
yes you should be able to type sys C: at the a: prompt, but unless you have a bunch of files on the HDD I would probably just reformat it with the /s
ok did what u said and now the hd will boot.thanx
but still could not get cd rom to work
this is what ive done so far.....
1.i have sys files on the hd
2.changed autoexec.bat A: to C: there was only one\
i got all this info off this site http://forums.techguy.org/showthread...p&pagenumber=8
and i still cant get it to work
except for i can boot with no floppy
im getting closer thanx for the help all input is very needed
ok did you check the config.sys file for the A: to C: changes also...i think the cdrom files are located there...
can you type in what your autoexec.bat file and config.sys file have in them...if I could see that we may be able to get you workin...
Uh crap I didn't read about the adapter...ignore my posts in this thread.
cph21 I had this problem before with an old laptop, I made a special bootdisk that would copy the files needed then allow you to shut the machine off and put cdrom in its place then it would load win 98 from cd.
I just looked thru all of my floppies and found it. If you want it let me know.
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