760XD - Windows installation without CD drive

[dstrong]

[Moderator edit: Moved from 600/770 Forum, added details to subject line]

I just picked up an old 760XD that only has a floppy drive installed. System is a pentium 166 with 32megs of ram and a 3.0 gig harddrive. I was thinking of putting windows 95 or windows NT 4.0 on this system since either of these OS's are resource hogs. My question is how to complete this task when the laptop doesn't have a CD rom drive. Thanks.

[Robbyrobot]

The best thing I found for such a situation was Link Maven. It Allows you to transfer files from a Windows machine to a (booted) DOS machine. Copy the installation files to the HDD and install from there. This allowed me to install Win95 on a 360C one time (also no CDROM). LapLink is unfortunately no good for this (unless you happen to have a DOS machine with a CDROM handy), since it only transfers "homogeneously" (DOS to DOS or Windows to Windows)

[al7kz]

If you have the Windows 95 OSR2 cd, you can make a floppy disk set by following instructions at

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operati ... 52691.html

Or you can download a utility called netbootdisk, and install from a networked computer using a wired ethernet pc card.

[phool@round]

Yo dstrong,

The "XD" was the primo model sold "with" a CD-ROM......

If you have another computer and a portable 2.5 usb enclosure you can place the XD's drive in it and attach to the host box and go from there.
Honestly it's been brought up many times throughout Bill's forum. Search for it and you will have as many "ways" as there are Thinkpad models.

If you have a copy of Windows 98SE it is the best OS as far as mature device drivers to get you up and running quickly on your old brick. Most of the Thinkpad ulitities will help you sort out other issues......like PCMCIA and that is a tough one without the Configuration Utility. There are links to the Utility sprinkled throughout the Legacy forum as well.

Good luck, nice snag....