Internal Dvd Drive Doesn't Work

MY DELL INSPIRON 700M WAS WORKING FINE A UNTIL A FEW DAYS AGO; IT CRAPPED OUT THE SAME DAY THE WARRANTY EXPIRED (GO FIGURE!). I'm trying to install from my Dell OEM CD, but I'm running into a lot of road blocks..so far I've been down since Wed (5 days and counting). I've been reading on how to create a bootable USB flash--I think I'm just stupid because I can't get that to make a good copy. I've tried using an external USB floppy drive; but the Wind XP startup disks wind up pointing it to the internal CD which doesn't work--I also get the BSOD. So now I'm trying to use an external CD drive but BIOS doesn't see it. Yes, my bios allows bootable USB HDD and USB FDD. If I attach my exteral Seagate Free Agent, its sees it (I've loaded the OEM cd in here and that didn't work either); if I attach my Vebatim USB flash key it sees it; if I install the new Pioneer DVR-X122 it doesn't see it. I need help. I'm thinking that there has to be a way to pre-load the DVR driver so that it's recognized and then I can install from my OEM CD. Also, the laptop cannot boot into the old windows installation. So the only thing I can do is try to boot from another device.

 

You say the laptop "crapped out". Without more details, it's hard to recommend a course of action. But if the hard drive is mechanically OK, here's what I would do in your situation (obviously you have access to a working PC):
1. Remove the hard drive from the laptop and hook it up to the healthy PC using an enclosure like this http://www.malabs.com/product.asp?product_sku=44773&item_no=IMBS25A-SI&show=b&pass=&shopid=
You put the HD in this little box, and using a USB cable, it plugs into the working PCs USB port allowing full access to the drive. You can get the enclosure from Newegg or any PC store for under $20 or $30. Here's one at Newegg for $9.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145752
2. Back up any data you want if the drive hasn't been corrupted or formatted. Save your pics, videos, iTunes music, whatever.
3. Format the drive as FAT32 with the system files. Back in the old Windows 98 days, the command would have been format c: /s but it's probably different now. Essentially, you want the drive to boot into a DOS environment.
4. Copy the i386 folder from your XP install CD to the hard drive.
5. Install the hard drive back into the laptop.
6. Boot to the hard drive. It should land you at a DOS prompt.
7. Type these commands: cd i386 and press Enter. Now type winnt32.exe and press Enter. This will launch the XP installation process, and you'll be able to install without using the CD drive. Once XP is loaded, you can use an external USB CD drive to install your software until you get the internal drive replaced or repaired.
NOTE- Installing Windows XP this way is VERY slow. I mean really, really, VERY slow. You may think that the PC has locked up. It hasn't. It takes some time this way because the memory management tools that normally get installed when running from the CD don't get installed. So be patient. Once the first blue screens with the white text are done, and the install is in the more graphical stages, it'll move along more or less as usual....
Good luck!
And welcome to Major Geeks!

NOTE- after the WinXP installation has completed, you can convert the FAT32 hard drive to NTFS. We used FAT32 in the beginning so we could use the DOS prompt; it is unavailable in an NTFS environment.

 

Ok, so I purchased the casing and moved my drive. When I open the Management console and choose format, it only gives me the NTFS option; no FAT/FAT32. I'm assuming it will still work. Also, you said format with FAT and system files; am I to put other files in the drive AFTER the format OTHER than the i386 folder? If so, what files am I to put in?

 

Try this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348
If that doesn't help, you may need to use a 3rd party tool from the Drive Utilities section here at MajorGeeks. If you don't use FAT32, you won't be able to boot into DOS to install Windows. As for the system files, you can use the files from a MSDOS boot floppy. Either create one using Windows XP (put a blank floppy in the floppy drive, right click drive A:, select Format, and select Create MSDOS startup disk, then copy those files to the drive before the i386 folder), or download a Windows98SE startup disk from here: http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/98.html You can extract the files from the .img file using TUGZip or WinRAR (available free here at MajorGeeks). Then copy the files to the hard drive.

 

Here's another Microsoft link that should prove VERY helpful:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307848/en-us

 

Ok, so I went through and formatted 10 Gig of the 60 gig harddrive to FAT32; I created a boot disk using my external floppy drive and dragged and dropped those files into the hard drive along with the i386 folder. The hard drive would not boot but I did get to a command prompt using the floppy boot disk. I ran the winnt file in the i386 folder and it did take forever to run. It finally indicated that it needed to restart and that it would continue installation after restart...when it came back up it said that Windows didn't detect any bootable devices F1 to continue or f2 to restart. It seems like I'm back to square one.