Thanks.
This tutorial finally made the imposible. Format a laptop hard drive in my Sony Vaio PCG-SR17 that now is running windows XP
thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!

My thoughts exactly. XP is running smoothly on an HP Pavilion ze4900.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Excellent solution thank you
 

I would like to thank William and all the other contributors on this thread for an excellent solution to what seemed to me to be an unsolveable problem. After following the tuto and the various replies concerning some of the setbacks I experienced during my attempt I have finally managed to reinstall the Windows XP OS back to my dinosaur Acer 341T.
If I may I would care to add a note.The major setback I encountered personally was getting the DOS ver 7.10 to install onto the formatted laptop HDD,eventually after a couple of failed attempts with cd's(would run but not give installation prompt) I wrote the DOS ver 7.10 contents to a new floppy disc using winimage and booted the host desktop with the laptop's HDD still in slave mode on IDE 1 channel 2 with the master HDD on the desktop disconnected and DOS ver 7.10 started to install.

Many thanks again and keep up the good work
Regards .
Stuart.

For people who want a no-hassle way to remove the dual boot screen:

1. Right click My Computer.
2. Open the Advanced tab.
3. In Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Select your default operating system from the drop down menu.
5. Find the "Time to Display Operating Systems" box. Uncheck it.
6. Done!

Dell L400 No Floppy Or Cd Drive
 

hello I am new here so please correct me if I make a mistake but would like to say a big thanks to William for his tutorial as it helped me get my brother-in-laws Dell up and running again after someone had deleted o/s files on his laptop. Thanks once again:)

~~wonderful Tutorial~~
 

Subject: Keyboard not working in XP install, but works fine in DOS

Okay so I did everything as stated in the tutorial, and I just can't get my keyboard to work on my Toshiba Portege 3500.

BIOS Setting for USB Keyboard and Mouse are 'Enabled'

The exact state of the XP Tablet install I am stuck in is when the installation asks where the files are stored.

Also, while in the installation the keys' lights up (i.e. caps, fn, num etc)

Any advice??

Thanks,

I have the same problem
 

I tried to format my hardrive in a DELL inspiron and then placed it in my DELL C400 but all I get after the bios is a black screen. any help would be great!

A shot in the dark here,hope it helps!
Is this after you have entered at the prompt in DOS> run smartdrv.exe (type C:\smartdrv.exe at command prompt) > (type C:\I386\winnt.exe)and then have a windows prompt line asking for the directory? If thats the case press the enter key and the installation should continue.

Dear william thnx for very nice tutorial. I hv toshiba laptop where i can install 6 floppy, but when it asks for installation win xp, i dont found external cd drive for further installation of xp, help plz.

my laptop works with floppy plz, thnx in advance

You still need a cdrom drive to install Win XP, do you have a one connected externally yet...