I am facing a rather unique situation that I haven't come across before where my client has broken their CD-ROM drive and needs a full reinstall of XP. So, I extracted the drive from the laptop and used my USB adapter to plug it into my tower, put in the XP Home Disc and attempted an install that way. I ran into too many snags so now my question is, can I create a separate partition on this disc with XP install files on it, and put it back in the laptop and install from there? This would be similar to the major manufacturers recovery partition so I imagine its possible. Any thoughts? Any better ideas? I would get an IDE adapter if I had time and just install from my tower but I've run myself out of time. Thanks!

try booting the laptop with a usb device ie usb CDROM/DVD using XP CD run as normal? OR usb pen dos install

As best I can tell, the laptop is too old and doesn't have USB boot capability.

You could clone it using an image tool. You could pxe boot to some OS and load it that way. Not easy. I'd consider taking the drive out and loading it and then fixing the hal later maybe. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

Yes you would need to start install from MS-DOS, this states CD but you can point to the D: drive where you would of copied the "XP CD": http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307...

Had to do this a few times recently. Tried several different methods. Like installing win98, then upgrading from the i386 file. Also installed ms dos 7 then installed from I386. Out of all, the one below is the one which proved to be the least problematic. 1.Pulled drive and installed into a 2.5 usb HD enclosure (also used 3.5 adapter on seperate occasion) 2. Copied files from boot98 disk to HD. using sys c:. You have to make sure the bootdisk inludes sys.com Also make sure to include smartdrv or you could be there all week long. 3. Copied I386 folder to HD 4. Plugged HD back in laptop ran smartdrv 5. Switched to I386 directory then ran winnt. Windows will start running thru the setup process. If you need boot disk just go to bootdisk.com. Well good luck and let us know what you did.