Loading operating system, with no cd-rom drive

[Jimbo]

Hi guys,

I have just been given an old Compaq laptop, should be fine for word documents and hopefully the internet.
The problem I have, is that it came without a cd-rom drive, and it has been completed wiped with no operating system.
How can I load on a operating system ? Is it possible from a flash drive ? And how on earth do I set the Bios to do this ? Or could I map a drive from my other laptop ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.............Jimbo

 

[Jimbo]

Thanks again guys, have ordered converter off ebay.
After copying the operating system to the Laptop hard drive, and executing it. Will you not then be asked each time the laptop wants to re-start during the install for the cd-rom ? how do you get round this ?
I can just see this not being as simple as you guys make out. I am reasonably savie with computers, but not to this level.

Jimbo

 

[trbd]

You don't need the whole CD, just the setup folder. You'll then probably need to CD into it from a command prompt and run setup.exe. There will be no autorun setup like you would get direct from the CD.

If the CPU is a Pentium M 1.2 (what google says) then I'd personally go with XP as the CPU is more than adequate, but stick another memory module in to take it to 512/1GB. I've had XP running perfectly fine on 400-500Mhz laptops pretty smoothly as long as there is plenty ram at it's disposal.
My old Dell D400 was only a Pentium M 1.4 (and came with XP from factory) and it would run rings around our 1.8Ghz+ laptops at work.

Upon further research, it's a Pentium 3 mobile, not a Pentium M, but I still reckon it should be fine with XP if you stick another 256 memory in it.

 

[hitman_gangsta]

use it on memory card it wiil work