CD drive/USB boot problems . . .

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May 17th, 2009, 10:11 PM
sahlomonic

CD drive/USB boot problems . . .

I have a Dell Inspiron 1300 that I bought used a few months ago, and after an unsuccessfull attempt to rid of the viruses and trojans, I decided to do a clean install of Windows XP or 2000. Problem is, the CD/DVD drive does not work, and I have not isolated that problem to being either the drive or the motherboard. As a workaround I bought a cheap external USB CD drive that I thought would work so I could install an OS from that. I changed the BIOS settings to have USB boot first, but the external CD drive is not recognized until Windows boots up. What can I do about this? I should also mention that when pressing the F12 post BIOS for the boot menu, I have 3 options to boot from, and neither is the USB option that I enabled in BIOS.
May 18th, 2009, 01:28 AM
Shinma
Quote:

Originally Posted by sahlomonic

... Dell Inspiron 1300 ... Problem is, the CD/DVD drive does not work, and I have not isolated that problem to being either the drive or the motherboard...

You can see if the following assists,
- Installing Windows XP Using A USB Flash Drive
- Install Windows XP using USB Flash...
Dell has only the WindowsXP drivers listed for that model.
May 19th, 2009, 08:03 PM
sahlomonic

Well, successfully prepped the USB drive, but ran into the BSOD. So rather than find another workaround, I just want to find a way to format the C:, then install via USB drive. How do I go about formatting without the use of a CD drive?
May 20th, 2009, 01:58 AM
Shinma

?
I certainly hope that you're not trying to make the bootable USB drive from the laptop in question.

With that said,
The technique used at the provided link provides option to format/create partitions.
*Noticed an error in his instructions.
It reads:
9. Type in the following: ( bootsect /nt52 :R ) Replace R with the drive letter of your USB drive
I got it to work by a minor change.
9. Type in the following: ( bootsect /nt52 R: ) Replace R with the drive letter of your USB drive
May 20th, 2009, 05:13 PM
sahlomonic

Why would it matter what source I am using to create the bootable USB drive?

Also, I noticed the error, too, and was able to successfully create and initially load the USB drive upon bootup, but would crach after the text saying "starting windows" during the blue install screen
May 20th, 2009, 06:39 PM
DanceMan

Quote:

Why would it matter what source I am using to create the bootable USB drive?

Quote:

unsuccessfull attempt to rid of the viruses and trojans

Because of possible corruption or errors in the bootable files.
May 29th, 2009, 10:20 AM
PcTestCard.com

Try http://bootdisk.com/ they got several boot option for you.

Hope this helps!
Bill
October 19th, 2012, 06:41 AM
toxic022

sorry to wake up old thread ... i have same problem and i solve it when i take off internal dvd-rw device from laptop. then i boot from external device very easy ...
October 22nd, 2012, 06:54 PM
DanceMan

Might be an old thread, but it's also an old problem that persists to this day. I have a Thinkpad X31 laptop that has no optical drive. I've booted it from an external usb dvd drive to run the no-1802 wireless card fix, but it won't boot from a usb flash drive containing a linux live OS. The same usb flash drive has booted a similar vintage T41 laptop.

I've had this same problem on various desktop motherboards that would boot to the OS on a hard drive rather than the cd drive containing a bootable disc despite the bios being set to boot to cd first.