Need help with old laptop...net boot advice

[MeNeZ]

Sup

I've got a big problem with an old laptop I bought. (I knew its condition when I bought it.) Its a P3 Compaq Armada full of virus's.

I want to format it but I cant boot from CD. It cant seem to see the CD-Rom on boot. From the brief period I spent looking online I saw that it may be a motherboard/bios limitation...or I was thinking maybe a boot sector virus.
I cant install when in windows either because it bombs out and I dont really want 2 partitions, 2k & xP

I bought 3 other laptops too which are different models & I havent had any problems with. It can only see the option to network boot...

Does anyone know how to setup a PXE net boot or alike? At my old place all that stuff was in place and we could use Altiris for example but I dont have anything like that at my current place and Im puzzling on how to format this thing :/

I could maybe try that HDD in another working machine but I dont think that will work to well because of differing models. (same brand)

any ideas??

 

[MeNeZ]

EDIT: I have changed the bios boot order to boot from CD 1st but no luck

Sorry for double post ^.^

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Looks like the CD-Rom is buggered.

Can you try to connect an USB CD-Rom and install from there? Or try to get a mongo USB stick (1Gb), make it bootable and copy the windows install files on there?

I also have the same problem with a craptop I received for free... so it's just gathering dust atm.

 

[Ryder_JHB]

I think the Ultimate Deployment Appliance may help both of you solve your problems (Provided those old laptops support PXE boot) I use it often, and I must say it works very well! Just get yourself a copy of VMWare Server (Free) and download, install and configure this appliance... It is pretty easy to configure and use!

 

[MeNeZ]

Ay cool, tanx guyz! I'll try both. That VMware looks like a winner

 

[MeNeZ]

Just one more question...(I havent had blady time to re-install yet)

Could a security policy prevent booting from cd to stop users from fiddling? These laptops were seriously locked down...

 

[gregmcc]

That would be set in your BIOS. When you boot up there's no OS loaded so there's no way a security policy could be applied.

Disable it in the BIOS and setup a BIOS password.

 

[MeNeZ]

Spanks!