This is driving me crazy, someone please help. The Situation - I have a laptop with a formatted HDD that I am trying to install XP on. The Problem - The CD ROM this machine came with does not work and does not have floppy. The original CD ROM was USB but the BIOS does not allow boot from USB. So I am left with the only option of booting from HDD. I have a 2.5 to USB enclosure and also have a 5.25 to USB enclosure. The system does not recognize the USB CD ROM so that is out. But I can edit the HDD on my desktop with the 2.5 to USB. Question - What is the easiest way to install XP from the HDD?

My suggestion would be to replace the broken CD drive. The laptop should have one for backups anyway.

The problem is that the drive is very expensive and hard to find because it is a proprietary device. I did get a solution from a friend and it worked for me. 1. Remove laptop HDD and connect it to another computer running windows. (there are many ways to do this, I did it with a 2.5"ide to USB 2.0 cable) 2. Format the drive FAT32 3. Obtain Windows ME and move all contents from ME cd to the freshly formatted laptop HDD. 4. Also copy over the XP cd. 5. Install HDD back in laptop and boot win ME. 6. From ME load win XP setup. 7. This worked for me and I hope it helps. Enjoy :)