How Do I Install Windows from an External USB CD/DVD Drive?

I have a very small Dell laptop with no internal CD/DVD drive or floppy drive. It has absolutely nothing installed on it. No operating system, no nothing. I would like to install Windows on it and have a device-appropriate Dell Windows Installation CD (I am told the CD originally came with the laptop).

I am able to do this to a certain point: the laptop boots from the Installation CD and begins unpacking the software. However, after running through the preliminary steps and rebooting to begin phase 2 of the installation, the installer generates an error message saying: "The file 'ASMS' on Windows Home Edition Service Pack 3 is needed," along with a prompt to locate it.

Unfortunately, at this point in the process, the Windows software does not seem able to recognize the external USB CD/DVD drive on which the appropriate file is located, and therefore cannot complete the installation. Is there any way to work around this? Is there any way to complete the Windows installation process on a completely empty computer using ONLY an external USB CD/DVD drive and an installation CD? If not, what's my best bet?

Apologies, by the way, if this is redundant or entry-level. I am a somewhat experienced casual computer user, but hardly an expert.

 

Thanks for responding, folks!

It's a Dell Inspiron 910 Minicomputer w/ Intel Atom CPU N270 (1600 MHz). Has an internal hard drive for storage (STEC PATA 16GB), but no built-in CD/DVD drive.

I can easily access the BIOS Setup. Boot order is set to look for USB, removable and CD/DVD drives first and in that order. As a result, I can easily start the installation process by booting from the CD in the USB drive. Problem is that once the computer has booted up and the Windows installation process is underway, the process itself fails to recognize the USB CD/DVD hard drive. This leaves me hung up at the point I mentioned earlier. Typing D:\etc. doesn't seem to help.

Trying to install Windows XP, by the way.

 

I'm just reading threads and many seem to point to a bad CD/DVD. Maybe try burning a fresh copy of the installation CD/DVD. Imgburn would let you "Create an Image file from Disc" to write an ISO file of the installation disc to another computers HD. Then use imgburn "Write Image file to Disc" to make a new CD/DVD from the ISO.

**You might be able to test if is a problem reading the actual disc rather than recognizing the USB device by Restarting installation and when it first reboots after copying basic files take the installation disc out and see if you get a message that differs from the ASMS error but still asks you to insert the installation CD.

 

Hey, thanks again to all who replied!

Couldn't get this to work, and the problem isn't (I don't think) a bad CD/DVD drive. Problem is that, at the point where the Windows Installation program goes looking for the files it needs in i386, it hasn't yet loaded the necessary drivers to deal with the USB hard drive. Or if it has loaded them, it isn't able to use them for whatever reason. So the drive remains invisible to the setup program.

Anyway, what I wound up doing was prepping an external storage drive (a 500gb Verbatim drive) for use as an XP installation drive using the instructions I found here (a very useful page on 911cd.net that shows how to install Windows XP from a USB drive prepared using USB_MultiBoot.cmd). Worked like a charm!

Happy post-Thanksgiving, all. :wave

 

I'm glad you found a solution that worked for you.

Congratulations!