Vista with an external CD drive

{Ron!n}

{Ron!n}

Distinguished Member
Im trying to install vista over my xp, however my laptops cd drive is ruined so im using an external LG drive. My bios is set to enable usb storage and cd drive, however, when the boot menu shows up it doesnt show usb and if i select cd drive it just turns on windows normally.
 
I don't think Mr Gates allows booting his OSs from portable devices. The activation/authentication you go through after install creates a key based on the hardware config, and that would be different every time if you were able to transport a hard drive between machines.
 
well does anybody have any ideas as i really think i need to reinstall windows and teh optical drive is shot.

Addendum:

Terry60 said:
I don't think Mr Gates allows booting his OSs from portable devices. The activation/authentication you go through after install creates a key based on the hardware config, and that would be different every time if you were able to transport a hard drive between machines.
Click to expand...

Actually i was talking about a portable cd drive but thats ok. I realised its not that important i think ill rough it up for acouple of months till i get my laptop back :wink:

P.S. I just discovered that posts after each other are merged. I used to actually chang the font to red to add something
 
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Well if the optical drive is shot. There are not that many choices. I think it has more to do with your BIOS. Have you set it to be able to boot from a USB device?
 
Sorry Ron!n - I misread CD as HD, ignore me.
Sounds like you need to spend a few dollars - but at least optical drives are pretty cheap.
 
i dont know if this works or not but i read somewhere that ypu can copy the vista cd to your HD and then boot off the hard drive. would you have to put it as a seperate partition or would it not even work in the first place?
 
It doesn't work like that.

EasyBCD has an option that can add the Vista installation disc (once copied to the hard drive) to the bootloader menu options, and you can then proceed to boot from it without a disc; but that option is not available on XP (where EasyBCD does not work).
 
Just for the record/common knowledge is there another way to install Windows if i dont have a working CD Drive?
 
Thanks for the link. Anyways, a bit off-topic but my boot sequence is set as USB Storage enabled.
However, in the boot menu USB device doesnt show up, is that because the only usb i have connected is the CD Drive+ Mouse. I thought it was supposed to show anyways. Is there a setting im missing or what?
 
If you stick a USB pen drive in the USB port, it should show up in the BIOS's boot device priority screen.
 
How do I access my pen drive? I put my pen drive into the USB port and open 'my computer'. When I double click on the pen drive, a message comes up saying; I don't know if this is because I am on a school system but I was wondering if anyone could help us with this.
 
Hi marchel, welcome to NST.
What's the message you get ?
Is it " ; " or have you omitted the message from your post ?

In Admin Tools / Comp mgmt / Disk mgmt can you see the flash-drive ? does it have a letter ?

Your school might have disabled the use of flash-drives as a group policy
 
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