How to Install in Notebook with no DVD,no OS,and no USB

Hi, I have a tough problem that I would really appreciate detailed instructions on how to solve. I recently purchased a Motion Computing M1300 Tablet (originally from Circa 2003). It has a 40GB HDD (internal - IDE I think) that has been wiped so it has no OS - only BIOS.

I do not have any keyboard or mouse (its a pen table) or DVD/CD Rom for this computer. It does have a USB and I follewed instructions to create a bootable USB flash drive with W7 on it, but that procedure gets only a few minutes into it and then fails because computer is unable to find any drivers that it is look for.

I do have access to a second XP computer with DVD. I have a Windows 7 DVD and also an XP DVD as well that I can access on the 2nd computer. I can and have taken out the HDD from the Motion Computer computer and I have a USB Drive attachment that allows me to connect the drive from the Motion table (after taking it out) to my second laptop where I can do all kinds of things to it.

What I want to do is figure out some instructions on what to do to the HDD after removing it from my tablet (maybe starting with a low level format) so that I can put an OS on the HDD (though the USB connected to my XP laptop) and after I put the HDD back in the Motion Computing laptop, everything will start working and the Motion Laptop will be usable with the OS.

I would prefer to have Windows 7 on it, but at this point, I would even accept someway to even get XP working on the machine. Everything I have tried so far just has not worked.

Thanks
Ken

first thing you have to find out if is Windows7 is going to work at all on that thing.
Good chance it won't recognize the tablet's touchscreen function, rendering it useless. (but you said you have USB, so I would surely connect a USB mouse just to be safe)

If you are sure Win7 will work on it, than you could do the following.

Install your XP again, the way you used to.
Under windows XP, divide the disk with partitioner into two 20gb partitions using partition magic, or Acronis Disk director.

On your other system extract the ISO into a folder.

Now take out the harddisk and put it on your other system and copy the extracted folder to the second partition.

Put harddisk back into the tablet and boot into XP.

In the explorer go to second partition and run setup.

During install choose the first partion, but don't upgrade, do a clean install.
(this will kill your windows xp, so if the install fails, you have to do it all over again)

Hope this works, but it's a tricky one.

Just thought of another option.

You could try with a USB DVD drive.

In the BIOS of your tablet you have to select USB as first bootdevice.

Hi squonksc - Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, I do not have a USB DVD - that is part of the problem. So I am not even sure how to load XP onto the Table "the way I used to". I just recieved the machine and it has/had no OS, so even to load XP onto the tablet, I need to take the HDD out of the M1300 Table and format it on the other machine 1st. However, on the other machine, I do have access to a DVD drive and a 2.5" drive interface so that I can connect it using an adapter to my working XP machine. Can you elaborate on the steps given that I have no way to put XP into the table directly?

BTW, I am sure that Win 7 will work on the computer.

Connecting a HDD to one machine, installing a Windows OS, removing the HDD and connecting it to a different machine is highly problematic. As in, don't waste your time. I think there are instructions on installing from the HDD on this site, but I didn't check.




Connect the tablet HDD to your other machine. Do this -

1. Format the M1300 disk as NTFS.
2. Copy the boot and sources directory and the bootmgr file from the WIN7 folder or DVD.
3. Start a command prompt and issue the following commands - where x is the drive letter of the M1300 disk.
   x:
   cd /boot
   bootsect x:

Now, re-connect the HDD to your M1300.

1. Boot from the disk
2. Choose the Repair option - skip through the prompts until you can start a command prompt.
3. Issue the following commands
   c:
   cd /boot
   del bcd
   bcdedit /createstore
   cd ../sources
   setup
4. Continue as you would with a normal installation.