Need help on laptop operating system

I bought a new in box Panasonic CF-17 laptop recently (but it was manufactured in 1998 never used before that). Just upgraded the hard disk drive to a 40 GB from its original 4 GB capacity (!). But I need to install an operating system as the new drive is squeaky clean, and this laptop has no CD-ROM drive or floppy drive. BIOS only gives me the options of A:/C: or C:, which means that even if I plug in a portable floppy drive or CD-ROM through the USB port, the monitor will read 'No operating system'.

Short of taking it back to a shop to let them do the work of installing the OS, are there any options for me to do a DIY job? As mentioned above, I have a USB floppy drive and a USB CD-ROM drive.

Also, I need some advice on DVD player software. As the CPU on this laptop is a Celeron 300 MHz (bought it on ebay for a bargain, please don't laugh at the speed), it cannot install PowerDVD or the latest editions of WinDVD. Any other options? Thank you.

I guess what you are saying is, that it doesn't boot from the cd drive right? In that case I would start by updating the BIOS flash rom, and see if that makes it possible to select drive D (or what ever) as a boot option. You should be able to download the flash rom update from Panasonics website, and run it from a bootable floppy.

Jan

This is not really a problem, go to Microsoft Support site and search for Floppy disk install for XP. There is a download that when exploded is a routine to create a set of boot floppies that does everything the boot CD does.

Your particular laptop was originally equipped with a parallel port floppy that was recognized and was bootable. If you can find one then you can install by floopy. Otherwise what I usually just remove the HD and put in on a desktop system, then I install XP and put the disk back in the laptop. Copy the I386 directory to the HD as well.

After it's back in the laptop, boot up and let plug and play sort it all out. Just be sure you've also copied all the necessary drivers onto the HD as well.

Here's the link – you may have to cut and paste it:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310994

AL

Did you get any disks with the OS on it? Which OS was installed on the original 4GB harddisk??

Reread his post, you guys are missing the point. He DOES NOT have a floppy drive and he DOES NOT have a CD rom drive. Offhand, I don't know of any way to update bios, or write to the hard disk without a floppy or CD.

Starlight said:

Reread his post, you guys are missing the point. He DOES NOT have a floppy drive and he DOES NOT have a CD rom drive. Offhand, I don't know of any way to update bios, or write to the hard disk without a floppy or CD.

Click to expand...

Yeah, your right, I wasn't paying attention.

WS, Hunt around ebay - those parallel laptop drives only go for a few bucks - same for the CD drives - be sure to look for one with the correct connector - probably min-scsi. Gonna need a CD sooner or later.

No floppy, no CD means the only way to install now is to pull the drive and hook it into a desktop and do the install there. WS knows how to install the HDD (he put in a new one), so he can also remove it long enough to plug it into a desktop system and do the XP install.

May have to buy a 2.5" to IDE to use the standard IDE cable in a desktop; these cost about 8$.

Google "IDE Adapters" or go to this link:-

http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=906&sku=17705

I've had to do this a number of times where the laptop is too old to boot from a CD and the floppy was missing or for some reason I couldn't use it. I did the same install on a 266mhz Toshiba ultrlight someone gave me about 2 months ago.

It so happens I did have the floppy and CD for this laptop but the CD just wouldn't read clean so it was was a lot easier to remove the HD and do the install on a fast desktop from CD.

After I put the disk back in and booted, it took plug-and-play a while to sort things out, but it worked well enough. Just be sure to download and copy all the drivers and such needed for the laptop to the HDD while it's still connected to the desktop.

By the way, since this is such an old machine, how much ram is installed?. MS say XP needs at least 64mb, but I've had real trouble installing with less than 128. With 128 I can install but the machine's still dog slow. It really needs 256 to get anything done.

Al

I'm assuming that you've put a bootable dos disk in the USB floppy and tried to boot it? Check you bios for something like "legacy usb support". I'm pretty sure that lets the PC try to boot from USB devices.

The Linux distributions usually come with a small program that lets you boot off floppy, then load off of CD. That might help. I did that with Slackware (www.slackware.org) just the other day.

I usually do what others have suggested; put the laptop drive in a full sized PC that has a supported CD and Floppy. The adapters are only a few bucks.

Daniel

Another thing, that laptop might be too old or it might not be possible to load XP on it so don't forget about Windows98.

Win98's not pretty like XP, but if you don't load it up with a lot of junk, it works well enough. That's what I ended up doing with the Toshiba because the most memory I could install was 96mb, not enough for XP.

It's not flashly or fast, but it browses and has enough horses to run MS Word without complaining.

Al

WAIT -- You're not seriously considering trying to install XP with a 300MHz processor, are you?

Win2k should work alright, but I wouldn't even try XP on there...

JM-99

XP will probably run, but will be as slow as an arthritic snail.

Stick with 98(Preferably SE with all the updates installed), I've got it on my old Zenith Z-Note 1000, and it runs fine. Just make sure you set it up right, and you can't really go wrong. Very little software I've encountered that demands anything higher to run (that you'll be using a machine of that spec for anyway).

Seriously though...get a floppy/CD-ROM drive!

Hi, guys. Thanks for the advice. The original hard disk came with Win2000, and that worked fine, so I'll probably stick with that or try WinME. Don't know if I can upgrade the BIOS though. I do have a USB floppy drive and a USB CD-ROM drive, but they don't seem to work; even when I plugged the USB floppy drive in with a bootable floppy, it activated for a moment and then went on to C: by default. If this laptop can run with a parallel port floppy drive as a default, then I can get one soon enough to try that. Have to check on RAM, don't remember how much there was.

Still no suggestions on having DVD software on this laptop?

Have to go to work soon. Will check back later for other suggestions. Thank you.

stick with win2k. Hope you still have the license key.
Check through your BIOS again and see if you can change the boot sequence, floppy(or maybe others) before the hard disk.

I don't know how useful this advice would be - it's probably worth what you paid for it (ie. worthless), but just in case it might be of any help:

Get a desktop computer and notebook-HD to normal ATA adapter, so you can attach the notebook harddisk to the desktop's IDE port. Boot the XP installation off the desktop, and you'll go to the text mode portion of the install. Complete the text mode portion all the way till the end, the part till they say your computer will reboot in 15 seconds. At this point, turn the desktop off and disconnect the hard disk, put it back in the laptop. You should be able to continue the installation from there.

Even MORE ugly method of doing same if that doesn't work - mount hard disk same way, format as FAT32, bootable, system. Ensure a copy of command.com and everything to boot a DOS system has been transferred to the hard disk using SYS.COM. Copy the contents of the XP CD to a directory on the hard disk. Reinstall hard disk in laptop, boot it, you should get a DOS command prompt. Switch to XP install file directory, and run the command (in win2K/NT it was WINNT.EXE, with the switches /B/F/C to skip unnecessary parts of the install). Ugly, yeah, but...

Personally, I agree that sometimes it's just not worth the time and trouble to resurrect the systems of yesterday. I sometimes feel like a medical technician going to EXTREME lengths to resuscitate something whose time has come - and since I deal with computers, there are no ethical issues about just leaving them for dead.

Two weeks ago I wasted six hours on an AMD K6-2 400Mhz system that really should have had a hammer swung into it and been dumped into a trash can.