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Thread ID: 64532 2005-12-18 11:58:00 The Infamous No-CD Windows Installation Dementedsnake (9440) Press F1
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413703 2005-12-18 11:58:00 Okay, so here is my problem. I recently recived a laptop from a friend. It is a COMPAQ Contura 4/25 (old, I know) and has no CD drive. It has a floppy drive and several ports on the back but no CD drive. I wish to install Windows 98 onto my laptop but as we all know; Windows 98 is installed via CD-ROM. This sucks. So, any ideas on how to get this done without opening or taking apart my computers? BTW: The computer I'm typing this on is a Windows ME and it does have a CD drive (its a family computer).

I really appreciate any help and while I wait on you guys to reply, I'm gonna search the web some more for help.

EDIT: And I'm not sure, but I think the screen ight be in black and white only. I say this because I played a colored DOS-based game on it without seeing any color. After pluging an external monitor into it, the colors showed up (but only on the extrenal mointor). 		Dementedsnake (9440)
413704 2005-12-18 19:27:00 It's below the minimum specifications for Windows 98.
Windows 98 requires a minimum of 486 66 MHz I believe, the 4/25 is 486 25 MHz as I recall.

Windows 95 *might* run OK and can be installed from floppy disks, but Windows 3.1 would be more appropriate.

Its also only got a 170 MB HDD

It has got a mono screen. 		godfather (25)
413705 2005-12-19 00:06:00 You could try a 1GB USB drive to hold the CD contents, and do a USB / floppy boot .

I know you said that you don't want to disassemble the laptop, but that's the pre-USB way to handle this sort of problem .

Assuming it has a 2 . 5" IDE drive (very common), you remove the hard drive, and use a 2 . 5" IDE adapter (common item at Dick Smith), and attach it to a PC with a CD drive .

There's a lot of variations on how to proceed from here, but here's one .

Create two partitions of the hard drive, one to hold the CD's contents, and one that will become the boot partition . The boot partition will be formatted later, so leave it empty .

If you do a google searchm you'll find no shortage of bootable floppies, CD's and even USB drives . 		kingdragonfly (309)
413706 2005-12-19 00:17:00 Well, I'm not sure about the USB port. I don't think it has one. But If the computer will not run 98 then I guess I can try 3.1. Just as a side note: By using "fdisk", I checked on my computer's memory. It has 199 MB all set to the primary, active partition. I'm not sure how to divide this between two partitions without wipeing it clean. Now that i think about it, I'm not sure it'll even let me. Can anyone recommend a thrid-party OS or something? Dementedsnake (9440)
413707 2005-12-19 00:21:00 Forget USB, that was not a good suggestion.

The hardware pre-dates USB, and neither DOS, Windows 3.1 or 95 will even understand USB.

Its a bit small HDD wise for anything later than Windows 3.1, but there are probably some minimal Linux versions that will run.

3.1 is on floppy, as are earlier 95 versions. 		godfather (25)
413708 2005-12-19 02:00:00 Even W95 will run slowly on that ... a 25 MHz bus is a real killer. It would make a nice little terminal emulator.

W3.11 is your best bet. I've got Linux on a 386/sx20 with a 40MB disk and 6MB of ram. That's a 1996 version of Slackware, with kernel version 2.0.1 . No GUI of course. ;) I put the same version on a 486/33 with a 350MB disk, when Redhat (6.2 or 7.2) wanted more disk space than that. 		Graham L (2)
413709 2005-12-19 02:07:00 No USB. You don't have the plug, you can't add one either becos you need PC Cards cardbus (32bit), you have only the 16 bit one. When I had a old laptop I tried adding USB but I couldn't becos I only had 16 bit slots at the time, solution for USB is to get a slightly newer laptop like a PI.

HDD. Yes you can upgrade a size but only a small one, but not worth it you mind as well buy a used PI or PII or PIII laptop for v similar money. The motherboard won't support the big HDD you find in today's HDDs or even the much of the used ones. At a hint maybe 500MB at most (?).

Solution if you wanna keep that laptop is use win 3.1 or win95 the earlier version "A", B and C version will take up too much space on your small HD. Install via floppy disks or take HD out and put in desktop PC and copy the CD or floppy onto the laptop and install from the latpop's HD. If you have a PC Card network card, you can hook it up and install via network, for this search via google. I have a printed article that I used when I had a PIII subnotebook without floppy or CD drives. 		Nomad (952)
413710 2005-12-19 06:15:00 just bin it Prescott (11)
413711 2005-12-19 06:27:00 Okay, so here is my problem. I recently recived a laptop from a friend. It is a COMPAQ Contura 4/25 (old, I know) and has no CD drive. It has a floppy drive and several ports on the back but no CD drive. I wish to install Windows 98 onto my laptop but as we all know; Windows 98 is installed via CD-ROM. This sucks. So, any ideas on how to get this done without opening or taking apart my computers? BTW: The computer I'm typing this on is a Windows ME and it does have a CD drive (its a family computer).

I really appreciate any help and while I wait on you guys to reply, I'm gonna search the web some more for help.

EDIT: And I'm not sure, but I think the screen ight be in black and white only. I say this because I played a colored DOS-based game on it without seeing any color. After pluging an external monitor into it, the colors showed up (but only on the extrenal mointor).

and here i am throwing a heap of pentium 2s away 		quarry (252)
413712 2005-12-19 06:39:00 NOOOOOO!1

im actually after an old p2 or similar.

do you still have them? 		Prescott (11)
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