I have a Compaq laptop without a CD drive. I want to reformat the HD & reinstall Windows 98. The installation is on a CD & I only have a 1.44 floppy drive on the laptop. I normally transfer files and programs from my desktop to my laptop using the direct cable connection. I assume that if I reformat my HD I won't be able to do this. Any ideas please? Terry

You need a cd

If the hard drive in the laptop is big enough, try using a program like Partition magic to make a small partition big enough to hold the Win98 setup files. Transfer them over to that partition with your direct cable connection. Format the main partition and then run the Win98 setup from the smaller one.

I do not know much about laptops, but I doubt if the setup cd is going to let you copy setup files anywhere else and work right. Can you remove the hard drive and hook it to your desktop as the primary master long enough to install Windows 98 again? (I wonder how they got 98 on there the first time as I never heard of Win 98 disks) If you had an archiving program, you could probably install Windows 98 with it by booting from a DOS disk and using Interlnk.

You can copy the setup files off of the cd without any problem. As long as you have the correct product serial number, Windows doesn't care if it's installed from a cd or a folder on a hard drive.