Hello: I'm a relative newbie at advanced installations. I have reecieved a Sony Vaio laptop which noes NOT have either a cd-rom or a floppy, nor access to a docking station. I have been able to take the HDD out and install it on another laptop which DOES have a cd-rom to be able to fromat, partition, etc. I would like to be able to do any of the following: A) Make the drive bootable in such a way that when I boot the Vaio up, the WinXP installation begins. B) Make the drive bootable with USB CD-ROM suppot so that I can begin the WinXP installation from an external CD drive. C) Make the drive bottable in such a way that I can at least begin the WinXP installation from the HDD and then finish from the externaql CD drive. Any help/suggestions would be of great appreciation. I understand that this is an awkward situation. p.s. I have tried to use a IEEE1394 drive to boot off of the BIOS settings, but for some reason it is not recognized. Thanks in advance.