[help] Formated A Laptop With No Cd Drive

ok here is my proplem I formatted my old laptop cause I want to turn it into a server computer for things like teamspeak and direct connect. but it has no cd drive it only has a floppy drive. I have a win 98 install cd and a pcmcia (one of the card slots) cd drive. Anybody here know how I can get the laptop to use the pcmcia cd drive and install win 98 from the cd?

#198020

Make a dos boot-disk with pcmcia cd-rom support.

#198030

@WTZ: how would I make the bootdisk I've never made one before.

#198380

you can just go to bootdisk.com, they have all your bootdisk needs for every windows o.s.

#198395

do as the previous speaker said.

=)

#198398

Awesome guys thanks, I guess I need to run fdisk first then use the win 98 cd right.

#198413

you dont need to run fdisk if you've already formatted the drive... fdisk is used to add/delete partitions... but if you already have that setup with the drive formatted, what you need to do is just get a bootdisk that supports pcmcia drive, have it plugged in and start up the computer with the disk in. when you get to the command prompt, just switch it over to the drive letter it assigns the cd drive to and run the 98 setup.

#198423

k one more dumb question then I should be all set how will I know what letter it assigns the pcmcia cd drive will it tell me? and right now the laptop won't boot up without a floppy in the drive what does that mean is that normal?

#198471

i wouldn't imagine it would do anything if you try to start it without the disk in the drive. if you what you said earlier is true and you formatted the hard drive, you're trying to start the computer with nothing on it. it has no operating system to boot up... this is what the disk is for, to get you into a dos session that will give you cd rom support. as far as that goes, if the pcmcia is plugged in and the boot disk you get supports pcmcia, during the startup dialog, it should display what drive letter it assigns to it.

#198498

Another idea:

Since you want to turn it into a server, it has already a builtin network adapter

or a PCMCIA Networking card, right?

Go download Microsoft Network Client 3.0 for DOS, have a DOS boot floppy

and install this network client from there. You'll need to have the DOS drivers

for your network adapter at hand.

Then, copy the entire CD from a network share onto your HD.

Run Win98 install from DOS.

You can ease creation of the DOS boot disk by searching for Bart's

Boot Disk on the web.

If you can't get ms network client drivers, maybe you can get so called packet

drivers; together with a free DOS FTP client, you can FTP the entire CD zipped;

unzip and proceed as above.

This way, Windoze wont miss a CD-ROM if it remaps CD letters at boot.

Or, if you get the CD-R drivers to work, simply omit the network stuff and

copy the CD onto your HD. Don't use DOS CD driver assignements during

install unless you really know that this version of Windows has built in

support for your CD drive.

#198848