I just got a toshiba portege 3110ct laptop with a blank HDD, no floppy, no cd rom (external). When it first came it booted to a c: prompt. I have a usb HDD enclosure that I installed the HDD to copy my win XP cd to so I could install it, put the hdd back in the laptop and started intsalling. I had some problems, figured I would start over so I formatted the HDD in windows using the USB enclosure on via my desktop, but now I can not get the drive to boot back to a C: prompt when its in the laptop! I have tried everying. It is missing the ntldr file and the other system files that load the c prompt(lost if format) and I dont know which ones to get back. HELP!!!!

ok i am not sure about this but. you want to go to the toshiba website they'll have drivers to format the drive. use them when its in the caddy(carefull at this stage to select the drive in the caddy!) if that dosent work try looking for how to create a bottable usb pen or floppy. i know you have neither but if you do what it says and drag the relevent files onto the hd instead of usbpen/floppy(look for the one that says drag a copy of the files that you need and not format to a bootable drive). That might work. could also be a case of formating the drive using your desktop and creating it as a bootable drive(note: diffrent from the creating bootable floppy/pen before, reson for this option may not be allowed by windows)

ok i've had another idea. the windows cd should be bootable. so if you format the drive in the caddy on the desk top then copy all the files from the cd to the hard drive that may work. it will boot into the install. that may work

Yeah, I already tried copying the contents of teh win xp cd to the formatted hdd to see if it would boot into the install, but nope, just gi ves ntldr missing message. Also tried copying al sorts of boot disks to the hdd to see if it would boot, nope.

ok try this you'll need the drive in the bay and copy these files the bits bellow from the cd to the drive into the root of the drive e:\i386\ntldr e:\i386\ntdetect.com then try it if it dosent work here is the web site that i got that info from. i think it will have the answer on it there http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Well, I allready tried that as well, it tells me "invalid boot.ini file, booting from windows", then followed by another error saying hal.dll was not found(since windows is not installed). The website shows solutions on how to get it to boot back into windows, but this does me no good since windows is not installed. I think I just need to figure out what to put in the boot.ini file so that its not telling it to boot into windows, but rather into the c:> prompt. Any ideas? Thanks

Upon doing ALOT of research, I discovered that when I ran the win XP install the first time, it re-wrote my master boot record to the new versrion that NT uses. This new version only looks for the NTLDR file, which loads the boot.ini file. The boot.ini file points the hdd to where the operating system root dir is so it can start up the OS. This is why it wont boot a c:> prompt. I have not been able to find a way to re-write the MBR back to the old win4.1(pre-nt: dos, 3.1, 95, 98...) So am pretty much screwed since there is no os on it!? What can I do? I have spent about 3 solid days worth of time total messing with it and am going crazy! Someone please help!