How do you install an Operating System on a Netbook with No CD Drive?

Awesomeness!! The netbook is back up and running with ubuntu again. Thanks for the easy instructions.

Now if I get windows xp .. I'll just reread this thread and that should help me do it the same way. Hopefully.

Anyway, thanks again for all your time and knowledge. It went a long way

Have a good one!!

 

well I thought it was up and running...
now it's stopped and saying it needs 8.6 gb available to continue installing.
How is that possible when last time it installed just fine. I was even using it earlier in the day to write some of these posts.
Do you think something is seriously wrong with the netbook?

 

so I just started all over again and redownloaded everything and repeated all the steps you outlined and it's FINALLY installing on the netbook. I always have the worst luck when it comes to this kind of thing. Sorry for making it so insanely frustrating.

 

ok so now I have a windowsxp ISO image .... now can I use those yumi type programs to install that onto the flash drive so I can install it to the netbook?

 

Do you have a valid key for XP? If it was ever used on another computer, you may have trouble activating XP. You can try Yumi but you have to select your own iso file in the dropdown box and then browse to the iso. Yumi may or may not work for the XP installer. Since you have an iso file, you can try Sardu if Yumi fails. You may have to change the name of the iso file for Sardu. Please see the tutorial.

http://www.sarducd.it/windowspe.html

http://www.sarducd.it/tutorial.html

Edit: If you are sure you will be using XP. Use Partition Wizard to delete and format the partitions as in my previous post.

 

yes it's a totally valid retail copy of XP with the included key. I don't see why it would have been used on another computer. It looks legit. I'm gonna go do the partition wizard and then I will try Yumi and if it doesn't work I'll try the other two links you posted and keep you updated. I don't know what I would be doing without you right now. This is all so overwhelming but I have faith in myself that I could do it as long as I have a patient teacher like yourself.

Ok I'm off to try and do this now ... keeping my fingers crossed

 

ok so I started with Yumi and I partitioned the netbook and then I went back to yumi and put the windows xp iso onto the flashdrive and booted the netbook with it and it seemed to be working cuz it went into the XP installation menu but then after a few minutes of loading the files ...it suddenly went to the blue screen of death and said this:

a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run chkdsk /f to check for hard drive corruption and then restart your computer.

Technical information:
***STOP: 0x0000007b (0xf7af2524, 0xc0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)


====================================

and that's end of the error of the blue screen of death.

Is it my copy of windows? We bought a legal version on ebay that came as a download so we didn't have to wait for the cd. It already came in iso format. Did I do something wrong?

Because it cost $50 to buy!! And my brother will KILL me if he just wasted this money. I thought windows xp would work on the netbook.

I'm starting to feel like i messed up big time and that I prolly should have not bothered with trying to make it windows. It's just that I have so many windows based games and that's all I really would use the netbook for anway. It orginally had windows xp on it but it was so corrupted I could'nt get into it cuz it always crashed while loading up and ended with the blue screen of death and then it would just reboot and do the whole process all over again.

I seriously don't know what to do now. I'm really not wanting to call my brother and tell him he just wasted $50 buck. He's gonna flip out hardcore.

I wish I knew what I was doing ... maybe all of this could have been avoided. ugh! I'm so sorry for wasting your time if that's what's happening now.

 

Ok I'm trying to use sardu but it's not making sense in the tutorials you sent cuz it's talking about downloading iso files. I don't need to download anything. I already have the iso file downloaded. I just need to get it onto a flash drive that will boot it onto the netbook. I tried Yumi last time and it went to the boot sequence but in the middle of that i got the blue screen of death while it was installing. So maybe it was yumi. I don't know. I'm just incredibly frustrated cuz my brother is gonna be so upset with me if he spent this money and I can't use it.

this is what the name of the iso file is:

en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-80428.iso

 

I guess I watched the wrong tutorial on sardu so I will try again with that program and maybe it'll will work better. I'll let you know.

again sorry for being such a pain in the ***

 

When you download sardu, it is a zip file. Unzip it to a folder in an admin account on your desktop. You should have an iso subfolder folder in the folder you unzipped. This is where you will put your xp iso file. Double click sardu.exe.
Then click on the Windows tab.

http://www.sarducd.it/images/Windows.png

Hover your mouse over the box that says Windows XP professional and a balloon tip will show up showing what the iso file you have should be renamed to. Close out Sardu then rename your iso file name that you put in the iso subfolder to the name shown in the balloon tip. Double click sardu.exe again and go to the Windows tab. A check should now be in the box next to Windows XP Professional.

Click on the search USB button. It will find your USB key. Make sure it notes the USB key and not your hard drive. Then click on the USB icon to create a bootable USB.

Edit: I would use a copy of your iso file in case something goes wrong.

 

THANK you! Ok i did that and I put the iso file into the iso folder in sardu and when I reloaded sardu .. windows xp professional was finally checked (yay!) and then I clicked on usb and then a box came up and said make sure flash drive is connected (it totally is) and then I click ok and nothing happens. When I try to click on the usb button again .. I get the same thing asking me to make sure it's connected.

Am I forgetting to push a button somewhere else now?

yep I pressed the wrong button... I'm so dense sometimes .. lol

it's installing the iso onto the flash drive now

 

WoW you are absolutely AMAZING!! I did every step you outlined and it WORKED!! Now it's installing windows on the netbook ...it's still halfway through the installation but I have gotten 30 minutes deeper into the installation than I did before. So here's to hoping and praying and wishing really hard that the installation takes.

I'll know in 39 minutes it says it will take to finish installing windows

You rock rock ROCK!!! :dood

 

YAY!! It loaded onto the netbook!! SUCCESS!!!!

But I can't connect to my home network for wireless internet .... I can't connect to the internet at all through the netbook now that windows xp is installed. It keeps saying that my network adapter or something isn't installed. I was picking up my network pretty much automatically when I was using ubuntu. So it's got to be something with windows xp. I haven't used xp in a long time so i am really rusty about setting up the wireless internet connection. Would you know anything about how to do that?

 

You are going to need a driver for the wireless adapter. I am going to be going out for awhile but I will try and find it. Do you have any yellow exclamation marks in Device Manager under network adapter?

 

Can you look at the bottom of the computer and see a white sticker with a barcode? There should be some number like AOA 150. Can you tell me what it is?

 

Yes there are more exclamation marks but there's no where that it says network adapter ... Just a big folder in device manager that says OTHER DEVICES and this is what's listed exactly under it all of them with yellow exclamation marks:

Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus
Ethernet Controller
Ethernet Controller
SM Bus Controller
Video Controller
Video Controller (VGA Compatible)

And thank you so much for time and dedication. It truly means alot to me

 

the sticker on the bottom of the netbook with a barcode on it says this:

AOA 110 -1588

 

Edit: okay, sorry for the cross post

You can find the drivers here.
Sorry, I gave the wrong page.

http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/default.aspx?tab=1&modelId=60

Select XP pro in the dropdown box.
Install in this order

Chipset
VGA Video
Ethernet (LAN)
Wireless
Audio (if you have no sound)
Touchpad
Card Reader

Forget the 3G driver.

 

I think we both missed the same posts .. LoL

Here's the number


AOA 110 -1588

 

WoW! Thanks! Now do I download all those drivers directly to the flash drive? Straight from the site? Or do I download them to this laptop and run them and then put them on the flash drive to transfer to the netbook?

 

I initially gave you the wrong driver page. The edited one is correct. Make sure the page shows AOA 110

edit: Since you do not have wireless, download them from the other computer and install on your netbook.

 

You are the most awesome!! :celebrate

Thank you! Thank you!

have a good day out there ... it was so nice of you to make time to do this for me. I couldn't have done it any other way.

I'll get to work now.

:wave

 

wow it took over TWENTY NINE hours just for this netbook to finish updating windows xp once it was fully installed. I am writing from the netbook now ...so again MAJOR successful mission ...thanks to you.

But of course I have another question .... I am not very informed on what updates are important for windows xp so I just let the installer select them all and installed them all. That might have been a mistake because once everything finished updating... I now don't even have ONE gig left on the drive and everything is moving SO SLOW now. I look for programs to uninstall but of course there aren't any... just a bunch of microsoft updates listed. Do I really need all of those installed or can I delete some of them do you think? I somehow need to make room. It's only a 7.5 gig drive and I didn't think windows xp would take up the WHOLE drive but apparently with all the updates... I was wrong cuz it's completely eaten up the hard drive space.

Any suggestions? Or is this just one of those things that nothing can be done about it?

 

I really don't want to depress you but imo there isn't any possibility of running XP successfully on a 7.5GB drive. While there are lots of files that could now be deleted (Service Pack and other update files mainly), in fact you need about twice that in practice as Windows grows considerably over time. My very lightly populated laptop with XP SP3 is currently using 12.2GB. OTOH Ubuntu runs OK in a 8GB VM and I could slim that down a fair bit if I was so minded (but I'm not because I detest Ubuntu). The Linux distro I would recommend you look at is Puppy Linux, which is not only very light on resources but is a real joy to use too.

 

I don't understand why they would sell it with xp installed on it just for it not to work. The orginial OS was corrupted so I had put a new one in again but it was still xp. So why would they market this product to work then? Seriously what a waste of money. :*( I thought I was saving money by putting a new os on it and it turns out I just threw away money for a netbook that sucks. I should have just tossed it in the freaking garbage then!! No wonder my friend didn't want it. Sorry for being so negative and venting so hardcore right now BUT I have been working nonstop on this annoying netbook for 3 days straight ..it's consumed my life. And now I feel like it was such a waste of my time. Thanks for being honest with me tho and not giving me false hope that I could actually fix this problem.

Thank you to everybody who spent so much time with me trying to make this happen. I truly appreciate it.

Have a happy thanksgiving!!

 

For profit, what else. Lord knows how many Vista laptops I've been asked to look at because they were literally crawling. All had been offloaded to a largely uninformed public with a mere 512MB of RAM. Even XP struggles a bit with just that. As I said, XP does grow over time, but it also needs considerable elbow room for defragging, and the user will also want to add some software and have somewhere to store his files. It's a non-starter.

 

Sorry for being so upset about this... it's just been one of those days where it's been one set of bad news after another. Thank you for explaining the logic to me. I guess I have no choice but to accept it and move on.

Have a good day