Windows Vista Reinstall Win Vista from External drives

My HP Dv9917cl,(#1) OS Vista, has either a bad mother board or is missing a driver. The message comes up "Please Insert a Disk in Drive E ". The DVD works with no problems in another HP Lap top DV9920US (#2) using Vista. The DVD from the second lap top also gives the same message when installed in (#1).
I want to reinstall the OS on (#1) and have external hard drives and also DVD/CD burner/reader. Can I use these to reload the OS or is the MB bad.

My WIN 98 floppy boot disk comes up with "No drives found" when booting with CD support.

Thank you

 

It is difficult to operate when it comes time to run a CD/DVD and the drive doesn't work. If you need to boot to something other than the HDD, you will need to make an external drive bootable.

My first suggestion would be to buy an external DVD drive. It will be a lot cheaper than getting the motherboard replaced(!) Think about after you have installed Windows, how are you going to install your software and drivers if they are on CDs or DVDs? Transfer them all to your external HDD? ...A lot of work. External DVD drives are not that expensive now. Just check that you have an option in the Boot Options (in the BIOS/Startup Configuration settings) to boot to a "USB CD/DVD drive" or wording like that.

You could copy the DVD to your external HDD and make it bootable.

It might also be possible to put the files onto a bootable memory stick.

Me, I would look at getting an external DVD drive which would solve the problem in the long term. Example
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...PA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=external+dvd
*note that that is a search for "external DVD ", not necessarily a DVD drive with burning capabilities.

HP talk about a recovery partition
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...9678/loc:1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3743999
but I think it just directs you back to using CDs or DVDs.

Matt

 

I have external DVD & HDD. Both are seen on the system Vista Device listing. One strange thing is with the original DVD removed fom the computer, just a hole, it still shows as available and OK in Device Manager? I will try a boot CD/DVD disk and see what happens. I can boot from a floppy but it does not see the External DVD. Oak software says "No Drives Found ".

Thank you and I will let you know what happens.

 

Can not boot from external CD/DVD. System BIOS says I can Boot from USB Floppy or USB HDD.

What I did was cloned the hard drive from a DV9920us and installed in the DV9917cl and it worked. This cleared the problem with the "Removed" no DVD just a hole from appearing in Device Manager. Now to see if I can do something with external DVD or fix originally installed DVD Burner.

 

Good workaround oldbear, thanks for letting us know. Good luck with fixing up the DVD drive.