# [SOLVED] Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s



## Sparky09 (Sep 17, 2008)

Hey there, 
I have a dell inspiron 910 here that has Ubuntu loaded on it. A friend bought it with ubuntu not realising it's not a Microsoft O/S and wants Windows XP put on. The trouble I am finding is of course being a mini it has no cd drive or floppy drive to do an easy format/reload. I have tried hooking up a usb dvd drive and boot from it (yes I set it in the BIOS and tried forcing it to go to the usb device first) and it refuses to find it. I tried opening it up to take the drive out.. thinking I can just hook it up to my desktop with an adapter and load the o/s and put it back in but don't see a hard drive anywhere to load. Must have changed that with these models. I also tried booting into Ubuntu to see if it would recognize a usb dvd drive but doesnt seem to pick it up.. not sure how to make it. Anyway, I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions or has done this before and can guide me on how the heck i can get this thing upgraded to XP. Helllp!


----------



## TriggerFinger (Jan 30, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Try the steps here:

http://www.syschat.com/install-windows-xp-without-floppy-cd-463.html


----------



## Sparky09 (Sep 17, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Hmm, that looks like a useful site but it doesn't seem to have anything that will work for me. This laptop has a solid state drive in it unfortunatly so I have no way of removing it and slaving it to my desktop. Thanks for the link though that might come in handy with another job. Any other suggestions? I know there's a way to boot from a usb thumb drive but all the procedures I've found online haven't worked from what I've tried so far so if anyone has an easy way of getting an xp install or even a 98 onto a thumb drive and can give me some more guidence on that maybe?


----------



## TriggerFinger (Jan 30, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Sorry to hear that it would not work in your case. About the boot from USB ports/drives... that one might need support from BIOS (like some IBM Thinkpads)


----------



## Sparky09 (Sep 17, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Yeah it looks like the bios does support booting from a removable drive. I managed to get it to look to the flash drive for boot options and disabled the hard drive temporarily but I'm not sure on how to get the flash drive bootable with windows xp on it from there.


----------



## TriggerFinger (Jan 30, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Windows XP on a flash drive? Hmmm... I am not quite sure about it but I do not think it is possible. Try something like linux, I believe you can do that with linux like Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS or DSL or Puppy.


----------



## Sparky09 (Sep 17, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Well, the problem is.. they have linux on it right now.. ubuntu..and they don't want it they want XP on. I've heard its possible although I'm thinking 98 is probably more doable. Just not sure how.


----------



## TriggerFinger (Jan 30, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

I did some readings and I found out that you can boot XP from a USB drive.

Here's how:

http://www.informationweek.com/news...articleID=177102101&pgno=2&queryText=&isPrev=


----------



## Sparky09 (Sep 17, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

Ok, I tried that link and followed the directions.. an hour later I had a copy of BartPE using Windows XP Home on a thumb drive that successfully booted. Unfortunatly, I didnt read the fine print Duh me.. it looks like that's what I needed but in fact it's just a BartPE installation on a thumb drive using Win XP files. It doesn't allowe me to set up windows anywhere in there so I'm still eauchared unless I'm missing something?


----------



## Sparky09 (Sep 17, 2008)

*Re: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) changing o/s*

DONE! After many many hours and repeated temps and input from several sources I finally found a way to get XP on this stupid little piece of... grar... ok I still hate dell.. just a little more now. Anyway, Thank you TriggerFinger for your support and input. Here's what I finally did to fix it. You'll need a thumb drive at least 2gb and a working computer with xp on it to do it. Here's the guide step by step on how to do this. If the link is broken just pm me and I'll send you the instructions... i'm keepin a copy of this one! Good luck to anyone else having this problem. 

link: http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html

P.S. I ended up using Windows XP Home. My copy of XP Pro didn't seem to load properly.


----------

