OS Install on older laptop: No CD drive, No USB boot optoopn

I have a older laptop which used to run Win XP, however it crashed and now I want to re-install XP. It does NOT have a CD drive and it does NOT have USB boot option in the bios. How would I go about installing XP?

Attempts:
1) I have a external enclosure and I took the hard drive and stuck it in there and tried to install XP from my Vista laptop, however the XP install wouldnt run.
2) I have a external CD drive, I connect to the laptop, but and put the XP CD in it, and tried to boot, but I found I had no USB boot support.
3) It has a floppy drive, but I have no computers with a floppy drive to be able to even use this.

4) My last idea is to load some other OS on the hard drive, from my Vista Laptop, and then stick the drive back into the laptop, hopefully get support for my USB CD drive and do a XP install.

I guess if there is no way to install XP, I might be able to live with some other operating system, like gOS or linux or something. I would really like to get back XP on it though.

What are my options?

 

The easiest way would be to install over network.

 

How would I install over network? I have a router at home, and I have my vista laptop. I have never done a network install before.

 

I did the following and it worked for me:

1. Take out HDD of old laptop
2. Put the HDD in another laptop and made it primary hdd.
3. Run Windows XP setup in the new laptop with the old hdd.
4. When XP asked to reboot after copying the files, simply turn off the laptop.
5. Swith back the hdd to the old laptop and complete the rest of the Windows setup there.

 

Oh cool. that sounds like a good suggestion. That sound like it might work.

EDIT: Arrrgg.. I found the gottcha. My current laptop is SATA and my old laptop is IDE hard drive.

 

All you have to do is connect the hdd to any computer with dvd-rom. Try to get a converter for your laptop IDE hdd to a desktop pc's IDE; if possible. I did the same for my old DELL Inspiron 4000 laptop.

 

Follow my guide:

How To Install XP Without Optical Drive

 

That is pretty cool of you, however, the problem is that Vista won't allow me to run setup for XP (because it prevents downgrading I guess).

 

Yes I came with the same issue, it sucks. I do computer repairing and sucks because my laptop serves me as the diagnostic and repair workstation and now that I started using Vista/7 it sucks not being able to run winnt32.exe, I had to use another desktop machine with XP on it to make it happen.

 

I am currently trying this solution. [L=Hard drive-windows-xp-installation-no-floppycd-drive]http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/870/harddrive-windows-xp-installation-no-floppycd-drive/[/L]

I am currently trying to get MS-DOS to run. Should I put the ISO file of MS-DOS directly on the hard drive and the bios will run it or do I extract the ISO file to the hard drive and the bios will run it?

The problem I am having now is that I format the hard drive (40GB), but I was trying to use FAT32 file system, well it failed at 32GB, so I partition the drive to be 29GB, but when I put it in the laptop, it says it has invalid file system. Do you know what could be wrong

 

Each time I re-format the drive with my vista laptop, partitioned to 30GB, with FAT32 file system, when I put it in the old laptop, it says invalid partition. I can boot from a startup diskette and go into the C:\ drive and start installing XP, but when it restart and it is supposed to boot from the hard drive, it says invalid partition. What is going on?