Replacement DVD drives: http://www.tiny-buys.com/cd-dvd-rw-drive-burner/hp-pavilion-dv8t-1100-cto.html http://www.uspartsdirect.com/sata-c...ilion-dv8t-1100-cto-replacement-p-147097.html http://www.eshop-pc.com/hp-pavilion-dv8t1100-cto-entertainment-series-dvd-drive-burner-p-3885.html http://www.mydvddrives.com/replacement-for-hp-pavilion-dv8t-1100-cto-sata-cd-dvdrwrom-drive-7901 Edit: did you first verify the drive no longer works? Maybe the laptop SATA connector went bad/pin broke, etc
Thanks for the link, blah. They listed F25 being the lastest and current version for the BIOS. Which is what I have. No new firmware to download.
Thanks for the suggestion, nkhoi! I will keep that suggestion in my list. I will try the network boot first and see how that goes. I don't really have an XP machine around any more. The oldest is a Vista.
Win7 is kind of smart and might not install all the way so you want his slower brother http://www.brothersoft.com/windows-xp-service-pack-3-220282.html
Well... I have to concede that this little challenge is not as easy to overcome than I anticipated. The DVD cables and sockets looked clean and solid. No disconnect. The reading head was cleaned, but didn't help the problem. DVD is still dead. The network boot is too complicated for me. Setting up TFTP server and DHCP server and static IP addresses and network mask and boot file. Various pages of info seemed to carry inconsistent information. I have given up on that route. Cloning a XP disk may not work from what I anticipated. I have only Vista from a couple of desktops. If I clone a Windows Vista that was built on a desktop and boot my laptop from it, I anticipate that I am going to have the same problem as I did the first round - mounting the SSD with Windows 7 built from a desktop and try to boot it from a laptop. Enough time is spent on this. I have under-estimated the efforts involved. I am going to order the replacement internal DVD drive and exercise patience for it to be shipped. I want to thank all of you providing many various suggestions. The ET hardware forum is read by many talented PC experts! Through this fire-drill, I've learned something about Windows and laptops and booting. Probably more than I ever wanted to learn, since I decided to switch my career from a former tech support to trading for a living. I figure that my time should be spent on researching for a better trading strategy than how to monkey around with things... Thanks again all, and have a Merry Christmas!
If the laptop is not detecting the solid state drive, that is a problem. Did you resolve that? Does the hard drive show up in the bios, if you check in there? If you could boot usb, which I see you said you can't, but there is software to mount the iso basically on a thumbdrive, and install from the thumbdrive fresh. If you could boot from USB... I tried to install windows on a hard drive in a different computer, then put it in the laptop, and it bluescreened. I did a boot (F8) to watch each file that it initialized, and it was the keyboard causing the lockup. Not sure how to get around that, but there may be a solution somewhere. If you can't get a solid state drive to detect, do you really need to go solid state? I mean, would you be ok with using a regular hard drive?
I clicked the link, user guides>setup info and saw many usb boot options listed. create a bootable flash drive, google it. copy the contents of the dvd to it.
Follow the instructions. If you have access to a W8 machine it makes mounting and unmounting the drives and ISO's a lot easier. (MSFT lets you download the ISO and try for 90days free) Also you MUST be logged in as Administrator or else it's just a royal pain running every job as admin. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee731893(WS.10).aspx Do you know when you install an OS and your machine reboots one final time before it's done and you can finally log in and use your new OS?? That's where this leaves you. You plug in your ssd and it will just turn on and run as if it's a new install. Can be done from any W7 or W8 desktop. Instead of a USB drive you are using an ssd and don't worry about disabling page file (though you may want to in your OS) and you may need to search for the location of bcdboot and bootsect in your W7 box but by then you'll understand what you are doing and probably love this so much you'll keep a couple of fresh .vhd's around and never boot from a cd or DVD again. ...now imagine putting a .vhd for your firewall or BSD/*nix auto trading system into a RAMDRIVE