gf's laptop

[flex123]

well I got it today and I'm trying to install the operating system. It has nothing on it so I got the bootdisk and created a dos partition or something. Now I had to go into the bios menu and change how the computer boots up. I needed to change it to start off loading from cd-rom so it would load straight from the disk. I know that this would work cause I just went through the same thing on my home desktop....I couldnt get anything to load until I changed the bios to run cd-rom first and than it loaded the windows operating system cd right up. Before doing that I'd get errors messages.

Well in this bios menu on the laptop their are only two options diskette or hard-drive. I figured the dos boot disk I used to run fdisk and set up the partition was suppose to set up the cd-rom also....but it doesnt show in the bios options any help would be great.

If anyone has noticed, I've been having computer troubles and been asking several questions on here...Dial-tone has been extremely helpful and I greatly appreciate all the help.

 

[RaZor Ramon]

How old is this laptop? Is this the $100 pentium 1? I've never seen a bios that didn't have CD rom as and option in the boot order.

 

[string_bean00]

How old is this laptop? Is this the $100 pentium 1? I've never seen a bios that didn't have CD rom as and option in the boot order.

I had a Pentium II that lacked this option, actually.

 

[Testosterone boy]

You gotta wait for dial tone to show up dude.

DT is rock solid.

 

[p0ink]

just donate the laptop for a $100 tax write off. seriously.

 

[Triple-G]

booting from cd-rom is a rather new invention, while cd-roms exist for more than 10 years, we are a able to boot from it for only some 3 years or so. windows 2000 still has the option to create boot disks as has windows xp.

you have 2 options:
a) the laptop manufacturer might provide a bios update on his website to flash a new bios version which includes a boot-from-cd-rom - option (unlikely)
b) create or download boot-disk images, boot from floppy and it will use the cd-rom after some initial setup. download boot images from here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm or create then yourself from a working XP machine: http://www.petri.co.il/create_setup_boot_disks_for_windows_xp.htm

 

[ManOfArms]

You just gave me flash backs to the early 90s. What version of Windows are you installing?

Anyhow, the boot floppy disk you have is for booting into DOS only, and what you need is a boot floppy disk with CD-ROM support. Click the link below, download the disk manager, then download the boot disk image you need.

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Downright_pages/downrights_bootdisks.htm

Hope this helps.