total crash...REALLY NEED HELP!

hi this is my first post here and i can guarantee it won't be my last. i planned on giving my 7 year old cousin my old dell latitude CPx. i opened it up for the first time in about 5 years and it wasn't too bad. it had some spyware and such, so i cleaned it up. however, the internet was beyond messed up as well as some other things. then it randomly shutdown in the middle of an update. when i turned it on i got the blue screen of death >:-O

so i formatted the hard drive and then installed XP. the XP install onto the hard drive was successful. however, when i turn the computer on it shows the dell logo thing etc., but then it goes to an all black screen with a white blinker cursor. pushing any button on the keyboard produces an obnoxious beep. what's wrong?

i know XP is on there because i hooked the HD up to my other computer with an IDE converter, and all the files are in fact there.

HELP!

 

Have you tried booting off the XP CD and doing a repair?

 

that's heavily problematic because my computer doesn't have a CD-ROM

the install was complicated
i had an external CD-ROM drive plugged into my desktop, which had the hard drive connected to it through the IDE, and then I installed it like that

 

but no i haven't tried doing a repair.

 

So wait... you had the laptop hard drive connected to your desktop computer and installed XP from there? If that's true, then the issue is that it won't have any of the drivers necessary for the laptop to run. You'll either need to install it from an external disk drive, or do it over network. I've never installed a fresh copy of XP over a network, so I can't help you there.

 

yes that's what i did
well if i'm installing it off of the network (however i might do that) how would that solve the problems of it missing the drivers?

 

When you installed it on your desktop, Windows XP detected and installed the appropriate drivers for your DESKTOP. It's no wonder that it throws up once you plug it into your laptop.

You're pretty much going to need to install it on your laptop to get it to work properly.

 

When you install XP, it pulls some basic drivers off of the CD in order to make the computer function at all. If you do it from the network, it should still have access to those drivers and give you a functioning install that you can further update after you boot up.

After doing a few minutes of searching, most methods basically require you to have the XP CD in another computer, share that drive, and be able to boot the laptop into another OS, often times off a USB drive. You then access the XP CD that's on the other computer and install from there. If you were going that method, frankly, I'd rather just install XP from an external CD drive. Easier, and I would assume faster. Does the CPx have a USB port? And can it boot from it?

 

problem...the computer doesn't have the ability to boot from USB. also, it doesn't have wifi

 

Can it boot from a CD drive attached to the PCMCIA slot?

 

not sure what that is

however, i am almost positive that it does NOT have the option to boot from anything EXCEPT its own hard drive

that's why i used an IDE cable

im so stuck!!

 

This really is a bit of a quandary. You may be able to boot from something in your PCMCIA slot, but that would mean you'd have to buy something new. Umm... I'm out of suggestions for the moment, but I'll keep thinking. Good luck

 

Did the computer never have any way of attaching a CD drive to it? Either through one of its slots or by using a dock?

I found a user's manual here
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pcpxhj/en/ug_a02/s_o.htm

It mentions a modular bay
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pcpxhj/en/ug_a02/modbay.htm

I guess it looks like this
http://www.mrnotebook.com/Active acessories/CPCD.htm

Assuming you can't boot from the CD drive, would you be able to boot from the Network and then use the CD?

 

hmmm i don't recall having a CD-ROM thing at all. how could i boot from a network without wifi? i have a wifi card, but that's not installed anymore since i formatted it. i have an ethernet port tho. could that be useful?

 

If it will boot from the wifi, it should be able to boot from the ethernet.

 

Ok you can do one thing..... First connect the laptop hard disk to your PC.... First delete the already installed Windows onto it and if possible format that partition as well.... Now copy Xp Setup files from the CDROM onto the hard disk.....

Then boot your desktop using some bootable CD like Hiren's boot cd and make sure you boot into DOS with USB support (so that it detects your hard drive)....

Now type the command Sys X: (where X is the drive letter for the laptop hard drive's main partition)....

Now turn off your desktop - unplug the hard drive from it - put it into your laptop and it should now boot into DOS and you should get a command prompt....

Now go into where you copied the XP Setup files and into the i386 directory

Type winnt and the XP setup should start....