wrote in message
...
On Jan 8, 5:03 pm, "Christopher Muto" wrote:
i would suggest that you partition and format the drive as a bootable
disk
while it is in the external enclousure and then create a folder call i386
and copy the contents of your windows xp cd to that folder. then put
this
disk in the ls400 and once booted run c:\i386\setup.exe
alternatively, get yoru hands on a usb cd drive and boot from that with
the
widows xp cd..

"wfromoz" wrote in message

...

I just got an LS400 with no hard drive (these come with no internal
optical/floppy drive). I have an extra new drive that I'd like to
install. Unfortunately I have no appropriate external floppy or cd-rom
drive. I do have, however, a hard drive enclosure that I've attached
to my Evo running Windows XP. The hard drive's recognized and I can
format it - assign a drive letter of E: or above - and partition it.

Is there a website or faq on how to set up a new hard drive under this
circumstance? I think I can make a small partition to hold the
contents of my Windows 2000 Pro CD if I can somehow make this drive
bootable and able to change drive letters.

Any and all suggestions will be more than appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. The part that stumps me is formatting the drive
as a bootable disk under Windows XP. The formatting part I understand,
and I see how to make a partition active, but how do I make it
bootable and able to recognize the 2nd partition with the setup files?

a simple way to accomplish this is to download/install the utility software
from the manufacturer of your desktop internal hard disk, or the
manufacturer of the temporary external (laptop internal hard disk). most
manufactures disk utility software will not work unless one of their drives
are present in a system. if one of your drives is seagate then get their
software as it is the best. with this software installed you can
partition/format and clone your desktop hard disk to the external hard disk
to set up the external hard disk as the new primary hard drive. then make
sure you have the windows xp cd copied to the \i386 folder on the external
drive. this should make a bootable disk that you can put into the laptop.
but don't expect the desktop installed copy of windows to work on the
laptop. start the laptop in safe mode command prompt and delete (or just
rename, you can delete them more easily through windows later if you are not
familiar with dos command) the folder \windows and \program files. then run
\i386\setup. hope that works... otherwise just get your hands on a usb cd
drive so you can boot the laptop with the windows xp cd and install windows
on the laptop drive that way.