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Strange XP installation problem

post #1 of 4
11/25/10 at 1:44pm
Thread Starter 
This is driving me nuts! I have a Vaio laptop which is badly infected and after 2 months I've decided to give up and reinstall XP. However, the Vaio's CD writer is broken, and the BIOS doesn't have a 'boot from USB' option, so I have bought an external caddy with the intention of plugging the infected drive into my good laptop as an external USB drive, and working on it from there. Questions are;
- can I put my XP disc in my good laptop's CD writer and tell it to load XP onto the infected USB external drive?
- if that is possible, would the HDD with the now clean XP system be OK to return to the Vaio laptop - would it run Ok or would it hit problems because the hardware recognised during XP installation has changed?
If anyone can advise I would be so grateful to get this laptop sorted once and for all!!
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post #2 of 4
11/25/10 at 7:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jones View Post
This is driving me nuts! I have a Vaio laptop which is badly infected and after 2 months I've decided to give up and reinstall XP. However, the Vaio's CD writer is broken, and the BIOS doesn't have a 'boot from USB' option, so I have bought an external caddy with the intention of plugging the infected drive into my good laptop as an external USB drive, and working on it from there. Questions are;
- can I put my XP disc in my good laptop's CD writer and tell it to load XP onto the infected USB external drive?
- if that is possible, would the HDD with the now clean XP system be OK to return to the Vaio laptop - would it run Ok or would it hit problems because the hardware recognised during XP installation has changed?
If anyone can advise I would be so grateful to get this laptop sorted once and for all!!
1) installing Windows on USB drive - not so simple, you would need a lot of tweak to do it and it is not worth the effort.

2) your best bet is to put that drive in the good notebook and load Windows from there, remove it and put it in the Sony, and adjust it with appropriate drivers.

3) the other better option is to get yourself an USB optical drive.

cheers ...
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post #3 of 4
11/26/10 at 5:46am
Even better would be to buy an internal laptop ROM drive (probably IDE) to get you going - they are really cheap now...(And will generally fit all)..
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post #4 of 4
11/26/10 at 11:33am
Thread Starter 
That is so useful - thanks both! I wanted to avoid at all costs changing out the dead CD writer, because as far as I can tell this means removing the whole top of the laptop - bezel, keyboard, and an internal metal protective cover, but I'd not considered installing the infected HDD in my good laptop! That sounds fairly simple cos removing the one from the Vaio was straightforward, so hopefully I won't mess up my lovely Acer Aspire! I will eventually renew the Vaio CD writer, but it's only become an issue now I need to reload an OS.

Thanks again!
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