laptop HDD gone tits up...

housem8s laptop HDD gone tits up, as per topic.

This would be nice and easy to install a new one, new os etc. BUT there is no cd drive in the sodding thing. only an external floppy drive. I have an external USB cd drive, but catch 22 of sys wont recognise it till windows is installed for the drivers, and cant install windows without a cd drive.

It isnt my external CD drive either, and is labelled as a dex cdrw52x24x52.

P/N: dexcdrw2
S/N 030802588

The laptop is an IBM thinkpad 570.

Any ideas ppl?

which windows version do u want to install?

Make a network boot floppy disk, presuming you've either got a PXE enabled ethernet card, or can find the correct dos drivers.

Then install windows via a virtual drive on your desktop machine

I had been thinking of a network boot, but have never done it beofre, so no idea how to!!!

Will have a look around the net.

am wanting to install win98.

cheers.

Network boot might not be an option, her pcmcia card seems to have gone walkies ffs >:|

However, i have managed to get the usb cdrw recognised in DOS. This has sprung another problem though, however this may be to do with the knackered HDD. Ordering the new HDD tonite, will update when i have more info.

Any ideas, lemme know :D

KV

Done this many times.....

Easiest solution is to get a laptop drive converter.
Then drive can be placed into Normal PC. Create 2 partitions, 1 main partition and 1 small partition that you can copy the windows installation files onto.

Boot into dos, install from HDD :)