x20 won't load Windows???

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stillfarr · #1 Post by **stillfarr** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 11:56 pm

Just purchased an x20 2662-12u second hand, thought I got a really good deal, now I'm not so sure. x20 came with some sort of dock, but can't tell which one it is (no floppy/cd drives in it either).

Anyways..... I turned it on and it went through bios ok and ten when it tried to load the OS it just seemed to freeze. Black screen blinking thingy in the upper left-hand corner. though I'm not sure it's actually frozen... if I press ctrl-alt-del the system will reboot only to end up in the same place.

I have read a whole bunch of threads about the hidden partition, but can't seem to access one, there's no cue to press f11 and nothing happens when I do. How canI access it? Is it possible the the partition was deleted?

I have removed the hard drive and placed it in an external case to view on my desk top, and it seems that windows xp is on the drive and seems to be running fine (on my desktop) reinstalled the hard drive in the x20 and still the same result.

Not sure what to do at this point. no floppy or cd drive in computer or dock. Do not have externals either (not even sure where to obtain them). I now see why I got it so cheap. Is there anything that I can do to get this running. OS is not important, just as long as the machine runs.

BTW - just for fun I installed another HDD before reinstalling the original drive and it loaded just fine. the hard drive was a 2.5GB drive and had windows 95 installed. the system loaded that up just fine, but wrong drivers obviously.

Any help would be greatly appreciated
James

pianowizard · #2 Post by **pianowizard** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:53 am

Because your Windows 95 HDD loaded properly, it looks like your X20 is okay. You just need to reinstall WinXP on that other drive.

It's cheap mainly because it's the oldest model in the X series, not because it doesn't have internal/external optical/floppy drives. The more recent X series models almost always sell for over $1,000 on eBay even though most of them don't come with these drives.

Luda · #3 Post by **Luda** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:54 am

you could either find a cd-rom drive for it, ebay. or you could do a network install, but that is pretty complicated.

stillfarr · #4 Post by **stillfarr** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:59 am

Thanks for the info, however I'm not sure how I am suppose to go about reinstalling winxp, if it's even suppose to have winxp. I forgot to mention earlier that the windows product key on the bottom of the machine is for win 2000.

I noticed when I put the other HDD w/ win 95 in the machine that it did not seem to recognize the ethernet port, so my next question... Am I able to do a network install. Also I am not sure if my usb port are functioning, I have nothing to test them with.

Any idea what I am looking at as far as cost for the cr-rom drive for this system?

sorry for the extra questions, but once again, any help is greatly appreciated.

thanks

pianowizard · #5 Post by **pianowizard** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:59 pm

These are the specifications for 2662-12u:

Celeron 500MHz (128KB) 64MB RAM 10.0 GB 12.1 SVGA TFT 800x600, Modem, Win2000

So, no, it doesn't have a usable ethernet port. It's there but it's fake. If you can connect this HDD to an IDE cable in a desktop computer, you don't need an external CD-ROM drive to install WinXP:

1) Install the HDD in a computer with a floppy drive, and boot the computer with a Win 98SE startup disc in the floppy drive.

2) Go through the FDISK and FORMAT C:/S process like we always needed to do back in the 80s and 90s, to make the HDD bootable.

3) Copy the installation files from both the Win 98SE and the Win XP CDs onto the HDD, into two separate directories.

4) Transfer the HDD to the laptop where you want to install Win XP, turn on the computer and install Win 98SE.

5) Within Win 98SE, start the Win XP installation process. Choose the clean install option rather than the upgrade option.

That's it. Most people don't do it this way, but instead go straight from booting from floppy to Win XP installation. I tried that once but somehow I got the notorious "NTLDR missing" error. So I decided to stick to my more complicated but more reliable approach. This is how I installed XP Pro on my TP X20, TP 240, Toshiba Portege 7020CT, and Portege R100.

pschemo · #6 Post by **pschemo** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:50 pm

Hi I just got the same problem..=]
I`m trying your solution pianowizard =D

But apart from that, does anyone knows how to install Win XP thru network??
I would really appricate that =]]

x20 won't load Windows???

x20 won't load Windows???

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