Hey folks,

Any help is appreciated. I am trying to format my pre-installed second hand Windows XP Prooperating system on a laptop that doesn't have a floppy drive. I didn't have a copy of an XP disc so my co-worker was nice enough to lend me one. I don't think it is bootable (don't really know much about it) After going into BIOS, I tried to make my CD drive the ONLY bootable drive and had put my copied XP disc in and it had an invalid drive error message of sorts. How DO I format ( get into DOS) and hopefully reinstall this borrowed copy of XP? ( with product key) I did come across quite a few sites mentioning how to create a slip stream version of windows XP and think I should be able to follow those instructions with the aid of my roomates computer. My only problem is that I cant connect to the internet after verifying all connections, router, etc. I get a TCP/IP error. I am trying to ascertain if it is a software or hardware (Network card issue) and I figured this would be the simplest and least cost-prohibitive way,( formatting and reinstalling) of telling if it was software related or if my network card needs replacing. Am I on the right track?

Title edited -- Please, use [TAGS] in your topic's title.

Please follow XP Forum Rules from now on.

--Sonic

Attach a floppy drive.

Boot from the floppy to a DOS prompt and then run WINNT.EXE in the I386 directory of the Windows CD.

If you have no way of attaching a floppy drive, copy the contents of the XP CD to a blank cd, and burn it (i do this with CD Burner XP pro) with a boot image from Bootdisk.com, then when you get the dos prompt 'cd' to the I386 dir, and run winnt.exe

Thats How i managed to do it on an older laptop.

HougTimo

ok...no usb floppy drive and wouldnt really use it after the format. Will try the 2nd option....but doesnt slipstreaming give me a boot image without having to go through bootdisk.com?

Thanks for your help

I am surprised that no one has said it yet but here we go....

First on your friends computer, download nLite..

Install it...

Use this program to alanize your XP cd to see what version it is... if it isn't SP2 then use the program to make a slipstreamed copy...

BTW it also will help you make your new cd bootable.

Any issues message me...

Thanks everyone for their input. Thanks especially to Brandon darth vader guy whose direction I followed and voila....I am up and running and back online. nLite really did do the trick quite easily.

Thanks again!