I guys, I've got this dell laptop with a swapping fdd/cdrw drive and it seems that it never recognizes the cdrw when i put it in. I need to reinstall the os on it but i only have access to the fdd. Now, how can i copy an OS like w2k or xp to floppies and make them bootable, ( for them to install from the fdd). Any ideas please,... Any sugestions would be very welcome and thanks a lot for your time all the best ant

I don't know about yours but my XP instal CD runs to about 597mb of data. A typical 1.44mb floppy can hold about 1.37mb of data by the time it is formatted etc so you would need about 436 floppies to hold the data. There is no practical way to instal XP by floppy. I'm not sure but it may be possible to instal using a USB CDROM if the PC supports booting from USB. I believe however that XP itself may not support instal from USB drive. Other possibility may involve taking the harddrive from the laptop, using an adaptor to slave it into a desktop PX and use that o copy the contents of the instal CD onto the HDD, then return the drive to the laptop and try installing from the harddrive. I have no idea whether this will work or how to do it. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

XP requires a working CD to copy the files to the hard drive, then point the setup to the folder you have created: http://83.67.55.228/msdosnt5.htm http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307848

Yes, Richard59, i thought of that for a fraction of a second and kind of imagined 100 floppies and very quickly put the thought aside telling myself..."Well dammn it, i'll still do it, i just want to get the thing working...! but yeah...over 400 is a bit of a stretch...uhmmmmm do you think i could take the hdd out and plug it in to a pc install xp there and then transfer it again to the laptop? How could i do that?

thanks for your reply plainandsimple, the thing is my cd drive does not seem to be recognized. It is a swapable one, and everytime i put the floppy in the laptop, it works; when i get the cd in there it says that there are no bootable devices. With the bios set to boot from the cd of course. Because my floopy works ok i was hoping i could install the os from there, even if it was 9x so then it would probably easier to get it fixed and then at a later stage get the xp done. Open to sugestions guys. Thanks a million 4 your...

If you can slave the laptop drive to a PC then you should be able to copy the I386 folder onto the drive. You'll need a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter (which can be a pain in itself as laptop drives are not marked like 3.5 drives). Anyway, if you manage that you can put it back in your machine & then run the install from there - I seem to recall the installation program in the I386 folder is winnt.exe "I know that I'm mad - I've always been mad..."

thanks johnr, i will give that a try.