Loading Win onto a lap-top w/out CD-ROM?

[Lackmusboy]

How do I load Windows98 onto a lap-top without CD-ROM? It does have a parallell port so that´s probably one way to do it, but I don´t know how... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Lackmusboy]

I should have mentioned this but the only OS on the lap-top is DOS... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
I really don´t want to copy the files from floppy so is there another way?

[Steve R Jones]

I borrowed this from another board. You might have to make some adjustments as necessary.

Boot with the floppy drive in, boot with a Win98 boot disk. Use the following commands at the A:\> prompt:

FORMAT C: /S

after the format completes:

MD C:\CDROM
COPY OAKCDROM.SYS C:\CDROM
COPY MSCDEX.EXE C:\CDROM
COPY HIMEM.SYS C:\
EDIT C:\CONFIG.SYS

Add the following lines to the Config.sys:

DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

Press ALT, then F, then O - type in C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT Add the following line to the Autoexec.bat file:

C:\CDROM\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001

Press ALT, then F, then X, then Enter a couple of time to save the file changes.

Remove the boot disk and make sure you can boot from the hard drive. Hopefully, you'll get a couple of error messages about how the system can't find the CD-ROM drive, that's OK since the drive isn't installed. Shut down, remove the floppy drive, install the CD-ROM drive, turn the system back on. You should now have access to your CD-ROM drive and can start installing Windows.

You're adding the HIMEM.SYS line to the Config.sys because without it Windows will give you an error when trying to run Scandisk during the install process. You can get around running Scandisk by using this command to start the Windows installation:

SETUP /IS

In order to make your life easier in the future and if you've got about 110MB of hard drive space you're not going to miss, copy the Windows installation files to the hard drive and install Windows from there. The commands for that would be:

MD C:\WIN98
COPY D:\WIN98\*.* C:\WIN98
C:
CD WIN98
SETUP

[justy]

It wasn't me!

But I know of someone who done it using laplink. They brought the whole CD across into a sub directory. Then booted with a 98 startup disk, and ran setup from the directory.

It seemed to work.

Hope this helps.

All the best, Justy.

[rbvpp]

[This message has been edited by rbvpp (edited 07-13-2001).]

[Ed_S]

If you've access to a parallel zip drive it's easy.

With the zip connected to a machine which does have a CD drive, copy the entire Win9x directory (folder http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif) to a zip disk. it WILL fit.

Move the drive to the laptop's port.

Boot the laptop with a boot disk that includes Iomega "guest" software, this'll bring it up with the drive enabled.

Install.

I've done it, it works. very time consuming, though. Took over three hrs to get '95 onto a 486 laptop that way!

Ed

[Yar1182]

Well, the ethical way to do it is to do a direct cable with a parallel cable. You may need your Win95 disk to do this as mentioned above. since you don't have a CD ROM you'll have problems.

Now someone could go to a store with a good return policy and purchase a CD-ROM. Copy the entire contents of the Win98 disk to their hard drive and then return the CD-ROM stating (insert reason here). A righteous and ethical person like myself would not recommend that though.

[Yar1182]

cough

[This message has been edited by Yar1182 (edited 07-13-2001).]

[dos7]

you can use a direct cable connection to network it to another computer. Im assuming this laptop has at least win95 already installed and running, but without already having access to win95 cabs files, unless they are already on the laptops hard drive, you may have problems even using direct cable connection. Since setting up and properly using direct cable connection with your parallel port may require you to have access to the win95 cd to install such things are ms client for network, and the needed protocols.

If your laptop doesn't have the win95 cab files copied to it's hard drive, you could conceivably copy any files it prompts you for by floppy from another computer, but this would be extremely time consuming, but it can be done. If you laptop does have all the files, then post back here and let us know and I or someone else will instruct you on how to use direct cable connection to achieve your goal.

dos7

[Lackmusboy]

Thanks everyone for your help.

[elroy]

You could remove the hard drive from the laptop and hook it to a desktop machine and copy whatever to it and then put the drive back in the laptop.