Computer Help needed.

[Terran]

A friend of mine gave me this old, nearly completely useless laptop....

233 MHz processor....lol!!

128 MB ram

3.5 Gig harddrive....

Now heres the probelm:

Sometime long ago some boob put Windows Xp on the Laptop. Making it even more unuseable...

I want to reformat the computer and install Windows 98 onto it.

But heres the huge probelm. I need to start the computer in DOS to be able to run the installation.

There is no floppy drive.

And the CD-Rom doesnt seem to able to be used as bootable media...because in the bios it doesnt appear to have the option of selecting it for use before it checks the harddrive.


So does anyone know how I can start this computer in DOS without the use of a floppy disk.....and without the use of the CD-ROM (unless someone knows of a way to make it a bootable media spot)....


I could really use some help this has been driving me crazy....and I cant seem to find information specifically talored to my probelm.

[Andy]

Just spoke to a friend of mine who knows his way around laptops, and he says its a total dud unless you replace the CD-ROM drive with one that supports booting.

Guess you know why he gave it to you now :p

[Terran]

I was reading this faq that supposively if I connect it to my home network...and on another computer share a folder with this executable linux installer that supposively I can get around it and install a version of linux onto the computer....

Or I can just do the last part....

Then maybe I can find out a way to install a version of windows using linux...

if anything I can use this computer to become more familiar with linux....


The challenge
You are in front of a working, networked machine and want to install your favorite GNU/Linux distribution on it. Unfortunately, you don't have any CD, floppy, USB-key, no nothing at hand. Fortunately, you don't need any one of them.
The trick
Copy the (small) Linux installer on a hard disk and run it from your previous operating system. Finish using the network. That's all. In some cases you can substitute the network by a (big) hard disk if your network is not good.
The even better trick
Jordi Massaguer i Pla is developing instlux , a sofware automating most of the steps below. Instead of hunting all across the internet for a bunch of files, now you just have to download instlux, run it and reboot. It's currently working for OpenSUSE 10 and Ubuntu breezy 5.X. Since you are now rushing to instlux to escape the reading of this boring document, let me just remind you to backup your data before doing anything!

[Eyebiter]

Get an adapter kit that lets you connect a laptop hard drive to a regular IDE connector on your PC. Less than twenty bucks at a computer store. Take the HDD out of the Laptop, connect to a PC with a floppy drive. Format the drive and load Windows 98, network drivers, and your favorite web browser. Remove the drive and put it back into the laptop. Connect to the internet and update the video, sound, modem, browser, and other drivers.

[Terran]

Just spoke to a friend of mine who knows his way around laptops, and he says its a total dud unless you replace the CD-ROM drive with one that supports booting.

Guess you know why he gave it to you now :p


Okay....Update....I got another similiar Labtop like the one I mentioned in the first part of the post....

They are both Dells....
So now I have a floppy drive that I can boot with.
Probelm is If I am using the floppy to boot with that means the CD drive has to be taken out of the Laptop (only one slot)....

So is there a way that I can install Windows on this computer now....

[coma]

Maybe you could borrow a preipheral. I bought an external CDr for 20 bucks off craigs list.
Cant you just hit F4 when you boot?
I think that gives you the option menu to boot to command

[Terran]

Dont worry I fixed it!!....Windows is installed....but Im stuck in either 2 colors or 16....and cant change the resolution...
*grumbles* now I just gotta find the right video card driver

[general tbag]

actually xp can run on even a pentium 1 machine with 96 megs of ram. I shoudl kno i have one. I bought it to see how well a 166 machine ran xp pro lite.and the results? yea it works, pretty good for such a old machine. with something like k-meleon with a lighter load from xp pro lite it works pretty dam good.