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Thread ID: 75121	2006-12-17 03:59:00	Reinstalling winxp from external CD drive?	Ravage (6815)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
507328	2006-12-17 03:59:00	Howdy My Dads laptop is reallllly messed up and therefore I want to format and reinstall winxp home. However, the problem is that his internal cdrom will not read any disk! He does however have an USB external cdrom drive that he uses instead. What I would like to know is (before I attempt a reformat), will I be able to install from the external cdrom. Or, like I expect, will the drivers for USB be erased along with everything else, leaving the formatted PC to no longer recognise the USB connection and thus no longer able to read the cd. Will the necessary drivers be preloaded from the cd into some 'temporary' location for a successful install? I should note that it is an older Toshiba laptop which includes a floppy drive if that helps ;) Cheers Ravage	Ravage (6815)
507329	2006-12-17 04:06:00	Does the laptop support booting from USB devices (in the BIOS)?? When the USB cd rom is plugged in, does it appear on the post screen, when u turn the laptop on?? If the laptop does both of the above, then there shouldn't be any prob. Just as long as the system can detect it on bootup, / in the BIOS as a removable drive, it shouldn't need drivers to install XP.	Speedy Gonzales (78)
507330	2006-12-17 04:42:00	Hi Speedy I don't think it does The only options seem to be: FDD, HDD, CDROM, LAN Could I use my home PC and the network I've set up to do it? How might I go about it if so? Cheers Ravage	Ravage (6815)
507331	2006-12-17 05:04:00	It may not work then if the BIOS doesn't detect / it doesn't appear on the post screen. Nah don't think your network will work. I would say the LAN option in the BIOS would only work if there's something on the laptop hdd. You could most probably install XP if u had a USB flash drive, (if u had a 4GB one), but then the BIOS would still have to support booting from USB removable devices. If u have a USB flash disk handy plug it into a USB port. And then go into the BIOS. See if u can see it under the boot menu.	Speedy Gonzales (78)
507332	2006-12-17 05:11:00	Better to use his recovery option instead - save you having to hunt down all the drivers for it.	pctek (84)
507333	2006-12-17 05:18:00	Howdy Pctek What recovery would this be? Do you mean like a hidden partition or something? If so, any ideas, how to access it? cheers Ravage	Ravage (6815)
507334	2006-12-17 05:25:00	Howdy Pctek What recovery would this be? Do you mean like a hidden partition or something? If so, any ideas, how to access it? cheers Ravage Did he buy it with an OS on it? It may show the key/s to press on the boot up / post screen . It maybe F10 / F12, or F2 ? It maybe one of the function keys .	Speedy Gonzales (78)
507335	2006-12-17 06:39:00	Hi He got the laptop secondhand several years ago. It did however have winxp home installed and has a COA on the bottom with the serial number on it. He was given no discs so I was going to use mine, however, if it does have a recovery partition that would certainly simplify things ;) Cheers Nathan	Ravage (6815)
507336	2006-12-17 06:47:00	Hmm if it was 2nd hand then this partition may, or may not be there. Depending on whether the original buyer left it there (if it had a partition, or a CD), or wiped it and installed their own version of Windows on it. I would reboot and press the function keys, (F10-F12) see what happens. If these do nothing try F1-F9. If nothing works then well the original buyer may have wiped the partition. Not much else u can do, besides fix the internal cd rom.	Speedy Gonzales (78)
507337	2006-12-17 20:58:00	Howdy It was a no go, if there is a hidden partition I can't find it. Spent the night cleaning the crap, malware and trojans out of it. The system is much better now although still not perfect. I installed SP2 on it and did the updates, however it also installed WMP11, which I rolled back to WMP10. Unfortunately, no media files will play with either version, it keeps coming up with error messages! Now I personally never use it and have install several other apps for playing digital media such as QCD and VLC which both work fine on his system. However, Dad is a bit old school and tends to default to WMP, therefore is there any way to uninstall WMP10 and reinstall an earlier version which seemed to work fine? Cheers Ravage	Ravage (6815)
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