Girderman

I'm real weak on laptops, but really like the idea of scoring a cheap laptop because the previous owner lacked the expertise and the motivation to make it work. So you have my help, for what it's worth.

Here's the deal. No floppy, no CD, no DVD well that just sounds WRONG. I can't imagine a laptop of none of these. Part of me says "prove it".

So prove it. Post a manufacturers spec sheet that says you got none of those and then I'll believe it. How else are you supposed to transfer data in or out.

Second, you need to know with some level of certainty that the device is even capable of booting via USB (some cannot). Run through all the BIOS settings and see if you can find one (or more) that indicate if it can or not. Failing that, go to manufacturer and see if you can find out on a "feature" list for the model that booting via USB is (or is not) an option. Post the exact model number here and maybe someone else can help find out for sure.

On the issue of what to boot WITH, I would put trying to boot via LAN at the bottom of the list of options. Many people have external USB CD Devices now, and you might be able to borrow one to use but see, here's the problem.

Even with a bootable device, unless you are certain the laptop will boot via USB you'll be wasting time (or worse money if you buy one).

Another option is to buy or borrow a USB HD (also becoming very common & cheap), but then you have to figure how you are going to get the XP data to the laptop. The only thing I can figure here is to mount an image of the XP disk but even then I just can't see it happening as the mounting software (like Daemon) needs XP installed to run and how can you run XP in order to mount an image in order to install XP ?

So that's why I doubt there is not CD device. It's just too crippled to be useful.

There's other ideas I have but even if they are possible (theory vs. practical application) they would still be more difficult than getting a USB CD Device. But if the laptop WON'T boot via USB, even that is not an option. So again I disbelieve that there is no CD-Device installed.