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trick my pc into thinking a flash drive is a cd drive


tkmadison

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I have a laptop from work that is in serious need of new parts, but at the moment it doesn't look like it's going to get them.

the problem is that it's hard drive is a little bit iffy, and the cd/dvd drive has stopped reading disks altogether. it is still usable, to be sure, and i would like to put windows xp back onto it.

it does not support usb booting and updating the bios has proven too much of a headache to do.

i have downloaded and created the floppy xp setup set and that works just great, except when setup really wants to get under way it wants to use the cd. my question is is there any way i can trick the computer into thinking my flash drive is the cd? or even modify the floppy files so that they point to the flash drive (it is recognized and lights up when the floppy disks have been loaded)?

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Windows XP doesn't need a floppy, but as your CD/DVD ROM isn't functioning properly I can see why you'd resort to that.

No, I don't believe that is possible. It would be pointless to try if you know that your system does not support booting to USB devices. Do you have another known-working CD/DVD ROM you can use? Do you know why your CD/DVD drive has stopped functioning? Borrow a friend's perhaps.

What specifically do you mean by the harddrive becoming "iffy"?

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(This will only work if your USB drive can be detected by the BIOS as a HDD or similar accessible device. Otherwise you may need to use DOS USB driver to enable such access.)

Copy the I386 directory of the XP CD to the USB drive.

Boot from a DOS boot floppy to a command prompt. Make an I386 directory in the root of the C: drive and copy everything from the USB drive to it.

Run WINNT.EXE in the I386 directory and proceed with setup as normal.

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>LLXX> I've been looking into loading a USB driver in DOS. My first attempt or two didn't work out, but I still have lots of options to try out. I've already got my flashdrive loaded with the I386 folder. It's just getting DOS to see the damned thing! After that, it's a piece of cake.

>neonerd> Interesting link! Nothing there I noticed that would quite do what I would like it to, but I'm bookmarking it nonetheless.

>Jeremy> I do know that it is indeed possible, I just haven't gotten it to work yet and was hoping that someone on the forum had gone through a similar situation and had an answer for me...but if not, then i've just got to keep plugging away at what i do know.

This is a laptop, and it's not modular, so I can't simply switch the cd drive with another. I'm asking around to see if anyone has an external cd drive, but no luck so far.

What I meant by an 'iffy' hard drive is that is has physical damage in a few sectors and it will ultimately result in data loss unless i partition around those sectors.

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I've been looking into loading a USB driver in DOS. My first attempt or two didn't work out, but I still have lots of options to try out.
The China DOS Union has collected some very useful DOS software, including USB drivers. Unfortunately the text is in Chinese, so this translated version will have to do:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/t...%2fdoswarec.htm

(Scroll down to bottom 1/4 of the page or so.)

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  • 2 weeks later...
What I meant by an 'iffy' hard drive is that is has physical damage in a few sectors and it will ultimately result in data loss unless i partition around those sectors.

It's only going to get worse; replace the drive.

Don't I know it. I've practically given up on this little project of mine. Can't get the damned thing to recognize USB no matter what I do.

Oh well, it's not my laptop. ;)

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