Needl Booting help

[N556EP]

Ok I recently bought a Dell Latitude L400 which does not come with a internal cdrom, not it did not come with a external one nor an OS. which didnt bug me becuase i have an external one allready and have an OS CD. I Hooked up the external CDROM via a usb port, Put the Windows XP cd in and started up the laptop. Since there is no os on there, for some reson it will show the Windows 98 loading screen then go to an MSDOS prompt the harddrive is competly empty except for 8 files. I cant seem to ge the laptop to boot form the external cdrom I have entered the Bios and tryed switching the boot process, from ATIP i think CDROM to removable device's but still nothign how do i get an OS on this LAptop thanks.

 

[skunx7101]

you will need to have the option to but from usb device for this to work, i don't know of any other way. have you tried to boot to floppy and then specify the cd-rom letter in dos prompt?

 

[N556EP]

THnaks for the reply

the notebook does not come with a floppy drive this notbook was desgined for slim look and does not have any drives in it, but when I try to switch the drive on the MSDOS prompt it say's A:/ not readly abort retry fail, but i do not know what else to do, to get an OS on this sytem, it was going to be a gift but this may turn out to be a bad idea, any other ideas? in the boot menu, it only gives me the options ATAPI CDROM, NETWORK BOOT, HARD DRIVE AND REMOVABLE DEVICES. I am all out of ideas

 

[skunx7101]

removable devices is talking about an external fdd if i'm not mistaken. look up the model number of the laptop on google and see if you can find out which fdd it uses...thats the best guess i have.
scott....

 

[N556EP]

BUt why would the floopy drive make a difference? Model number PP01S.l I have no way of installing an OS via Floppy plus i dont have one, and dont think i am goign to buy one. i really do not know what to do

 

[skunx7101]

well if you can boot to the floppy with cdrom support it may pick up the external cdrom drive...not sure though. I never had any luck with those damn things. I think I'd start over if i were you...just an opinion though.

 

[N556EP]

Start over as in But another laptop? that would mean i just wasted money, lol. Well I posted on the dell website maby the Support team can help me out. thanks for your help