Laptop Windows Problems! Read!

[Dr. V]

My friend has a Sony VAIO laptop with no CD or Floppy drive in it. That's problem number one.

Problem number two is that his Windows XP installation just screwed up on him (because he doesn't know what spyware software is)...and now I can't seem to find a way to reinstall either Windows Vista or Windows XP.

When I took the hard drive out and plugged it into my computer (with an IDE-to-USB cord adapter), I managed to format the drive, but got no further. The Vista installation wouldn't read any drives except the two I have natively installed into my motherboard.

I'm pretty sure this has something to do with USB devices. Is there any workaround to it? Maybe a certain tweak that needs to be done to make this or the XP installation work?

Also, as not aforementioned, I have a USB DVD burner hooked up to the laptop and it's actually reading that it's there - but the DVD doesnt register to boot - and the boot order is correct.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Solutions? Hard ons?

Lol that's reminiscent of the last slogan

[Lead Head]

The only idea I can think of is to get a 40 pin IDE to 44 pin IDE adapter. You can get one here

[screwballl]

set the boot order to boot from add-in devices/external drive instead of "disc drive"

[Dr. V]

Originally Posted by screwballl

set the boot order to boot from add-in devices/external drive instead of "disc drive"

I CANNOT believe I forgot about that...wow...

Thanks for resetting my brain there! I'll try that as soon as I can.

[stinger608]

Ummmm, Is there a partition on the hard drive that has the OS and all of the factory crap on it????

Check, because a lot of manufactures are doing that, and you have to hit a control key during boot up for the restore to begin! Not sure, but I think it is either the f2 or f10 key.

[Dr. V]

Well I remember now why the USB thing never occurred to me...

4 options:

Optical Drive, Floppy Drive, Hard Disk Drive, Network

There are only those available to shuffle around and disable.

Help?

EDIT:

@stinger: Nope.

[Dr. V]

Nothing I've tried has worked, this is really odd. I don't know why I can't choose Removable anything as a boot choice.

[screwballl]

maybe try optical drive and it may see the external drive as an optical?

Otherwise it sounds to me like it is time to crack open the case, remove the drive, get the 2.5-3.5 adapter and format... then just copy the entire XP CD to the hd in a folder like C:\installation

[Dr. V]

Well I have a cable to connect a smaller hard drive like that to a USB port, and transfer whatever I want onto it. So I could extract all the files into a directory onto the drive...but then what? Will it read the info on the hard drive as boot info I wonder...

I think that may work...if I'm understanding correctly.

[Dr. V]

@screwball

I've tried setting it to Optical Drive - doesn't work.

Also, I transferred the entire XP CD onto the hard drive, and tried setting the boot to all the aforementioned possibilities - no luck. The same BOOTMGR is missing error pops up.