help with installing windows without CD drive

my CD rom drive, lite-on LTD-163 is recognized in bios but says that it is not installed and it wont read my windows XP cd when i try to boot from CD. windows is not on the hard drive right now so i need to install a fresh copy somehow with a floppy. i dont know if i need a driver for my cd rom or what. i already tried to download a driver for it but it didnt work and said that "no valid cd rom device drivers selected". and i havent had luck trying to instal windows 98 from a floppy either, im competley lost when it doing anything with windows with floppies.

i tried to install xp with 6 floppies and on the 5th it said "file ntfs.sys caused an unexpected error" and i had to restart..

 

You can't install Windows XP without a working CD drive.

 

The only other way to do this would be with a Ghost Server and a Ghost boot disk with the NIC card set to pxe mode.

 

Are you running windows then inserting the cd for windows install?

Or are you trying to boot up thru the cd when turning on the computer?

 

my cd drive works fine its just that in bios it says in parentheses next to the cd rom drive that it isnt installed. before my old hard drive crashed, the drive worked fine and would read cds no problem.

it is a new hard drive that i am trying to install a fresh copy of windows on

 

Some drives in the past (maxtor comes to mind) made you use a utility to prep the disc before you could do anything with it...there is a techy term that slips my mind...long day at the ranch.
See if you can format the drive first if you received a utility CD with the drive.

 

I see in post #5 you have a floppy drive. So if you have another networked PC with a CDROM drive and hopefully a router, you can install from the other PC. If interested, make a network boot floppy and I will help with the rest.

 

alright, i made the disk. now i need help as to what to type after i boot with the disk. thanks.

 

Another way to install XP without a working CD drive on that PC is to remove the hard drive and install it another PC, (one with a working CD drive) as a slave drive, partition and format (FAT32) the drive as required from Disk Management, then copy the i386 folder and its contents to the drive.
Remove drive and refit drive into original PC
Boot from floppy Win98 boot disc with smartdrv.exe on it
Run smartdrv.exe
navigate to the i386 folder and run the WINNT.exe file

NOTE: Look for the Smartdrv.exe file on the MS-DOS startup disk. If it's not there, you can copy it to your boot floppy from the \Windows\Command folder of any version of Windows 95/98/Me.
The Boor Disk Essentials has smartdrive.exe in it
http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml
scroll down to Special Boot disks
or even use the single XP one
MS Windows XP System setup disk
Allows you to boot from a single floppy disk, partition and format the drive and then begin the XP installation from CD.

 

ok, so i did what jack said, and i ran winntm and i got to the windows XP install screen and it was working fine and copied all the files. then it said to reset the computer and take the floppy out and i did and when it restarted nothing new happened and it said the same old "ntldr is missing"...

 

Fran4D, regarding your solution of using the Netbookdisk. I need help installing windows on my laptop (cd drive isnt working) using a pc on the same network.

Contact me ASAP ples

Regards,

Kevin W

 

Have you double-checked the IDE (or SATA) cable at both ends (CD--ROM drive and motherboard) to make sure that they are clean and firmly seated? Have you checked to make sure the 4-pin power plug if firmly seated in the CD-ROM drive?

 

The way you did that you have no mbr...you need to find the ntldr and ntdetect.com from a working system and drop them into the root of "C: with your boot disk. Or boot up with them on a floppy and then drop into "C" root.