Booting from External Hard Drives

[the Crazed]

Cherished Friends,

Help is needed, answers are welcomed. 

I just helped crash a friend's computer and suggested he get an external hard drive to boot it up (it's a laptop) so he wouldn't have to format his old drive.  Unfortunately, I wasn't really thinking about how the computer might recognize it from the USB port and now my friend has bought one and I'm desperately trying to figure out a way he can boot his computer from it. 

We've looked in his BIOS and there is no option in the "Boot Order" section to choose a USB device... is there any way to create this option?  To teach the computer?  To sing?

I feel so bad because I exacerbated the problem and my expensive solution isn't looking like a solution at all. 

Anyhow, any and all help is appreciated, as always.

Thanks!
Crazed

[[BTF]Defiant!]

1) try an online search related specifically to his/her model computer.

2) try upgrading the bios on the laptop to the latest. 

3) You could download and burn a bootable CD on another computer.. then use this bootable CD in the laptop to "bootstrap" it on.  Then running Linux or XP on from this bootable CD you can mount the USB drive which can have all their files/programs.  If you choose to do this, there are tools like BootPE (XP) and many Linux varieties.

4) You could return the usb disk and just reformat their machine.  Or use a boot CD briefly to backup what was on their laptop disk, over the network, to another machine so that reformatting the laptop disk isn't seen as such a risky move.

Def

[UUD-40]

Can you get it into DOS?

[plastik]

GOOD NEWS! you can boot USB devices.

The external drive should come with a bootdisk, or installed WHILE the old hard drive is still in the computer.  Anyways, there is a 50MB LIVECD Linux Distrobution called DSL, (www.damnsmalllinux.org) Boots from USB and CD, very small, windows like interface.

you can use this LinuxCD to go into his old hard (if it's not NTFS) and 'fix' the system so it will boot.

Boot from XP CD (hookup external, possibly detected to install to. you CAN install XP again, or do a Fix-Install)

But really, unless the hard drive can be recognized by the BIO's or booted up by a disc, then it's useless to use as a main one.

 you still have not focused on telling
us what exactly is wrong with the computer.
because that in itself may be easier to fix
than trying to install some HD that requires an operating systems P&P

[the Crazed]

Thanks for the comments, guys.  UUD40, I can get into DOS actually.

At this point I'm hoping to get a boot disk that will actually get me into Windows where I can install the external hard drive and copy all my friends files over to it (and avoid the need to boot from it), then format his old hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows on it.

I haven't really told you the problem with the computer because I don't really know.  He had gotten a trojan on his comp and I went through some online scans and discovered some contaminated files which I deleted (3 of which were in the Windows folder: mshp.dll, and two programs called something like nvrcontrol.exe) - which continued to be saved in the system restore.  The comp started up after this just fine.  Then a few times later it kept freezing at the blue windows screen right before the desktop is supposed to appear.  It just hangs there indefinitely now. 

For some reason we haven't been able to do a fix-install - when we try we get the command prompt (I'm helping him by phone, btw).  Any advice on how to do that?  Or to boot into windows using the XP CD?  (he's running XP professional).  I'm not sure why he can't do it, I've done it on my own computer before...

Thanks!
Crazed

[plastik]

you can download the 4 disc floppy set of the XP Boot Disks...OR he should be able to boot the cd from itself, or any 95-ME Boot Disk.  On windows XP when you boot from cd, you can choose either a freshinstall or a repair install.  do the repair install, because if not it will format it. It was basicly reinstall every file and configuration to default, but user specific setting and files usually stay in tact.  the quickest and simplest is to restore the files you deleted in the first place.

[the Crazed]

Okay, here's the update.

So we've been able to boot up his computer by replacing the c:\windows\system32\config files with the c:\windows\repair files.  However, all of my friend's files were under his own login name and pass which is no longer prompted.  I know the files are still there somewhere... but how to reach them?

Any ideas?

[plastik]

he should be able to reach them still without any problems, unless he formatted unknowingly.  I did a full install minus the format and i still have all of my user files, it is in the folder 'Documents And Settings'.  If he cannot find them whatsoever, he could always goto download.com and download a file undelete utility, and maybe recover them. 

[Gorgut]

Could use Knoppix to access the needed files, move them to the usb drive, format the original drive and install fresh, then plug the usb drive in and start using the windows XP sychronize power tool to keep a good backup.  Not keeping a backup of important information is the first mistake.

Gorgut