My laptop lacks a CD drive. Is there a way to Format and install windows?

Answer 1

Yeah! Put a cd drive in it!

Answer 2

You can hook up a CD drive externally through a USB or Firewire port.

You can use a USB flash drive if it's big enough to hold the disc image if your laptop supports USB booting.

Your best bet, though, would be to remove the laptop harddrive and use a converter to plug it into a desktop with a CD drive. Then you can boot from the CD and format and install Windows through the desktop.

Other than that, the only option left I can think of is to use the 6 XP floppy disk method from microsoft found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310994#XSLTH3135121122120121120120

Good Luck!

Answer 3

if your laptop is old enough to lack a cd drive then its, and you, are probably not lucky enough to have the bios and equip ment to do so and its going to make it difficult.

ideas.

1 partition off free space and put on a stand alone installer
2, network, but that requires a network, other computer and software.
3. external cdrom, IF your computer is recent enough to boot USB then this is the easiest way. if your latop had win 98 installed on it when your purchased it, then its a good chance thats a no.

if your having trouble what any of this means, take it to someone.

Answer 4

you might be able to do it via Network Boot, but you will have check if you laptop's motherboard supports it or not. And you will need another computer with the Windows Network Installation Setup on it ready to go. You will need to run PXE and boot your laptop with network cable and install it over the network. (You can format the Laptop's hard disk once you get in to the Setup)

Boot a computer via Network port is a little complicated task, for more detail search google for Network Boot help

Answer 5

a usb external hard drive with windows installed???

Answer 6

with a usb optical drive maybe ...