Right, let’s set this post out nice and simple, yes? The stuff I have... - Partition Magic 8 - Nero Burning ROM - Original XP Home Edition Disc - Original XP Professional Edition Disc - Approx 100GB free space on partitioned HDD's (IDE and SATA) (3.5") - A 40GB 2.5" IDE Laptop Hard Drive - USB 2 enclosure for said Laptop Hard Drive - A laptop with no OS installed on the hard drive (above) - Also, disc drive no longer works on the laptop. The problem I have... I really need to install Windows XP Home Edition onto this laptop I have in possession. Currently, there is no OS installed on the laptop's hard drive. (This is because after numerous attempts to install Windows XP Home, I decided to just format it.) I've tried many methods to get Windows XP Home on this hard drive. But when I install the hard drive back into the laptop; it's a no go... usually displaying something along the lines of, 'no active partition' or something like that. This is one method I used; http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176 I followed that, all the way through, and made my own edited version! With the laptop hard drive in its USB enclosure, I wanted to install it directly. It started to install (hoorah) but then, it weirdly asked me to insert a disc named "Windows XP Professional SP2". Why would it need that? - So I even emailed the guy from the website, and he sent me the replacement files to put onto the installation disc; gave me the same thing! - I decided to put my Windows XP Pro disc in... Started to install, then complained that it could not find a hard drive to install windows too. Another method was that I made a fresh install of XP Home on a new partition on my computer. Worked fine, then I used Partition Magic to clone it to the laptop hard drive. Cloned fine, just wouldn't boot. So, I must have been missing the boot section, correct? I even made the partition Active, and a Primary device (in partition magic), and copied the boot.ini, and the other two files that the PC needs to boot windows. (I forgot their names; one ends in .com) Still, I had no luck. This is where I turn for help. After searching for days on the internet, looking at various threads and other information packed pages, I need some serious help! Help, please? Maybe I've done something wrong? Possibly forgot something so simple? I've made a partition bootable on my PC, but why not on this laptop hard drive? I will be so grateful if someone could help. Thank you in advance!
partition & format the 2.5" hd thru your desktop computer. install that drive back into the laptop. enter into the bios to make certain the boot drive is the rom drive. boot off the xp cd & install.
Be patient with me and explain why you aren't placing the laptop drive in the laptop where it belongs, and installing Windows using the laptop's optical drive?
OK, well I've explained why I haven't installed the OS using the laptop already; The disc drive doesn't work?
indochine, didn't notice the time stamp. sorry. BootMe, when you talk about disk drive, are you talking about the floppy drive or the rom drive?
might want to either get that drive replaced or get an external rom drive whether cd burner or dvd burner as you'll need a rom drive to load all your other programs onto laptop.
I think ddp's suggestion is a wise one. Installing XP on a USB external disk is a tricky and unofficial business, not guaranteed to work in all circumstances.
What about installing XP Home on a new partition (on my computer) then cloning that partition onto the laptops hard drive?
When you install XP onto a partition, it is tailored to the specific hardware it finds: CPU, motherboard, northbridge, southbridge, disk controller, RAM, display, network, sound, usb, firewire, etc. If you then clone that installation onto another disk in another computer, you are going to hit major, show-stopping problems, (like EVERY item in the hardware profile vanishing at once!) all the more so if the first computer is a desktop and the second is a laptop. Also, when XP Home is installed in a computer, it generates a hardware key used in product activation. Transferring the installation to another computer is going to completely invalidate that hardware key.
OK, thank you for your input. Guess I'll have to sort a replacement for the DVD-Rom drive. Been a great help, thank you!
