I have an interesting situation... I have a laptop with windows XP. I want to reinstall XP but the CD ROM is not available to me. The laptop has a working network port. How can I uninstall and reinstall under these circumstances? I have some knowledge and have heard of booting to a network. The CD on my desktop has a shared CD. Is there a way to do this? Much thanks for any guidance

What happened to the original CD and what is going on that makes you want to reinstall?

The connecting cable for the CD has been lost. A replacement cable may not be available. Additionally, I have heard about booting to the network and thought this would be a good opportunity to learn.

If the issue is just needing to have access to a CD-ROM drive over the network, share a CD drive on one of the other computers on the network, connect your computer to network, and map that drive. You'll be able to access that drive as if it was connected to your laptop.

I am trying to format the hard driive and reinstall the operating system on a machine that cannot use its CD drive. if I format the drive, then I have nothing on the machine. It is my understanding that there is a way to boot a machine to the network in such a circumstance. This is what I have been asking about.

I am trying to format the hard driive and reinstall the operating system on a machine that cannot use its CD drive. if I format the drive, then I have nothing on the machine. It is my understanding that there is a way to boot a machine to the network in such a circumstance. This is what I have been asking about.

how many drives do u have in ur system
if u have atleast two then install another OS in the other drive

it may help u

also if u have USB device then u can boot through the usb device also
if not just get usb device and an external hdd case " 5.3 inches "
i will solve ur all the problems u didnt even guessed

get help at ::> prof.thakur@yahoo.co.in

Installing XP from a network share is certainly possible, but you'll at least need to build a bootable floppy disk with network support.

A basic overview of one method can be found here:
http://www.networkcert.net/xp/install.htm#bootdisk

The links in this Google search have details and descriptions of the different possible methods of installing XP over a network.

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