Laptop HD

[DarkDragon7099]

Hi, I have a Compaq Presario 710E (I think)
it's kinda of old but still works
the problem is that the CD Drive doesn't work anymore and I bought an External one because when the internal stopped working I had the computer without Operative System on it
The problem is that the External drive needs drivers and although it reads the Windows XP CD it doesn't read some of the files necessary for the installation and restarts, first I was concerned that maybe the CD was scratched but I tried with linux, windows 98, windows 2000 and none of them is able to install. Is there anyway I can connect the HD of my laptop (that is removable) to my desktop so I can install the OS from there and then take it back to the laptop?

If there is please tell me, everyone I asked untill now say that they never heard of sucj device that connects a cable of one disk type do another type of disk.

thanks in advance, DarkDragon7099

 

[Kage]

Hi,

As for the cd rom drive not working while it is starting up to install windows could be because it would be a USB device. A USB device won't usually recieve power before accessing windows (or the installation) which is why you could be having troubles reading the disc, but not if it booted up the windows installation, as this would make it recieve power I wouldn't know how to fix this.

as for the hard drive (as its removable and not inside the laptop (usb I'd guess?)) you could do that. Though if it was removable from the laptop and not using USB, I would not know how to do this I'm afraid unless it did still use IDE cables like a normal PC.

You could encounter some problems using Win xp though:

Windows XP has a protection feature where if it notices a big change in hardware, it'll stop windows working when it boots. In this case you would have a problem, though its worth a go.
Install it as you normally would in the desktop and then put it on the laptop. When it boots, you'll find loads of drivers that will be different which might make it fall because of how many they'll be compared to your other system.

If you wanted to sucessfully do this and have more of a chance, I would not install Windows XP onto it, but rather Windows 2000, or Linux if thats your thing (Though I don't know how well this would work), as it'll have much better chances of actually booting with the new hardware in your laptop and seeing the new devices i have moved a hard drive from one PC to another and it has booted succesfully

Hope this helps, and works

 

[DarkDragon7099]

Thanks for the help, I just found out that my uncle is buying a new laptop so he's not gonna use the old one (that is the same as mine) so I'll just get the Internal CD-Drive from him ^^