I've been given a 500Mhz laptop which seems to have a corrupt copy of WIN2000 installed. It tries to boot but eventually fails with a fatal error and then tries to reboot.. ad infinitum...

So I want to install either 98SE or XP, preferably XP - I have both on CD - but neither CD is bootable, neither is there a floppy drive on the laptop. I have 2 other desktop systems, one runs 98SE and has a floppy drive but no burner, the other runs XP and has a burner but no floppy, they are networked. I also have access to an old laptop running 98SE which has a floppy drive.

What should I do? Is there an easy way to create a bootable CD ??

I'd appreciate some suggestions. Norman

I would double check with the laptop manufacturer about installing XP. On an old Thinkpad that had 2000 on it I had to flash the BIOS
Are you sure there is no option in the BIOS to set the CD drive to first boot device?

No the BIOS seems fine. The CD drive spins but it them moves on to boot from the harrd drive. I have also tried booting from the CD with the hard drive disabled in the BIOS and it gives a msg saying 'press F1 to retry blah blah..' I have also tried a replcement CD drive and get the same result. BTW it's a Dell laptop.

All the boot disks you will ever need right here. http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Thanks OldPhil,

If I use 1 of these disks to boot the system can I then swap in the distribution CD in order to install Windows to the hard disk? or what is the process to make this work?

I've just tried the download from the http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm site....it's no use to me as it writes to a floppy drive and I haven't got one!!!

When you disable the hard drive, you must Enable the CD drive to boot first. Are you saving changes when you exit the BIOS?

Yes I've saved the changes in the BIOS - I can hear the CD drive being accessed but it doesn't see the CDs as bootable, I've tried them in my XP desktop and similar results... I've even tried a WIN95 CD and it doesn't boot either...

Hello - retail XP CDroms are bootable, I dpon't think 98 is. As far as I can remember, 98 was installed by booting from a floppy and the rest of the
install continued from the cdrom. Win2k CD is also bootable.

Both of my Win98SE CD's are bootable. I didn't believe it until I was told a couple on months ago. I've always used a bootable floppy.

Buy a floppy drive they aren't much.

Thanks for mentioning 98se being bootable. I bought mine in the summer of 99 and all this time I never tried it!

Thats alright I wasn't aware if it until a few months ago. Make sure your BIOS/Cmos is set to boot from CD Rom first.

Sorry I'm a bit late repling to this thread, but something you can do with most cd writer apps such as nero, etc. is to make a bootable cd. Now I use an old computer with win me, but I made a disk with the contents of the "c:\windows\command" directory and I boot with it, and then load other cdroms that don't auto boot; also you can partition and setup the hard drive using "fdisk", then "format /u" (microsoft took off the /s option on me so ya have to do it the hard way.)then a "sys" and it will boot to a dos prompt (these apps are in the c:\windows\command directory).

Oh by the way; if you want to save anything on the drive don't do the fdisk/format/sys as it will delete everything; of course there are ways to still get the data back but most likely you will loose something; even though you can recover almost everything even after a fdisk, format and sys.

I have seen problems ware a bad boot sector on a hard drive will cause the windows setup not to work.

I did have a problem with ntfs5 as in xp pro with me, but ntfs4 will work with me, so you could boot, swap cdroms and run the auto run on xp home using the me boot cdrom. As I recall the only versions of me/98/95 that would boot were full retail packs, not upgrades or most oem's. You can do a full install with an upgrade but it will ask for your older version as a validation before doing the install.

I would think you could make a xp cdrom the same way, as the me one, not sure right off hand about the utilities on xp as I don't use it much; I need a newer computer and xp is way too slow on my old hardware. Whenever I win the lottery I'll get me some new computer hardware.

Here is a site you can download the ISO file and it has How to directions in a link to help you with it.

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

This will create a bootable cd, not floppy

The Windows 98 cd is bootable.