Win 2K Boot-up problems,,,, H E L P

[Wingz]

Hello,
Our company recently aquired via an auction from a \"dotcom\" company that went out
of business, a IBM Thinkpad 600x. This laptop has only a CD drive, (no floppy drive). At this time I can\'t boot up as I
keep getting an ERROR 08611. I am unable to get to a
safe mode or a DOS prompt.

(I was able to once come to a User/Pass macro, but that is a differant story. At some point I know I\'ll need to address the passwords problem).

Is there some hotkey I can hit during boot-up to give me control of the boot-up sequence?

Or can I make a Bootup disk on to a CD that will help me get past this?

Can I try a reinstall? If so, since I do not have the win2k
operating disks, can I use another start-up disk that has
been transfered to a CD? (Remember, it has no Floppy Drive).

Where is good place to find some helpful tips on WIN2k, (I\'m
a newbie with this particular operating system).

Any and all suggestions will keep my Boss off my back as long
as i keep trying to fix it, (he was the purchaser of the Laptop).

I will thank everyone now for any help large or small.

[Josetann]

One way, is to get a laptop drive to desktop adapter (about $10-$15 at a local computer shop).  Pop out the laptop\'s hard drive, connect it to the adapter, then put it in a regular PC.  Format the hard drive as Fat32.  You have some options now.  Personally, I would put the system files on it (assuming the desktop is running Win9x, and the laptop drive is drive E:, you\'d type \"sys e:\").  Now, make a startup floppy from that OS, and copy all the files to the hard drive (as long as it\'s Win98, 98SE, or Me, you now have everything you need on the drive for it to boot, and recognize a cdrom drive).  Put the drive back in the laptop.  When you boot it up, select CD-ROM support.  Put in your Windows install CD, and start setup from there.

If you have a Win9x CD, just run setup from the root of the drive.  If you have a Win2k or WinXP CD, go to the i386 directory, and run \"winnt\".  Also, it\'d be a good idea to load smartdrv first, so it won\'t take so long to copy files to the hard drive.

[TheReasonIFailed]

Off topic, but how do you load smartdrive??? I insatlled XP last weekend and it took forever because it wasn\'t installed!!

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if at first you dont succeed, call it version 1.0

[Big_Z]

Under Windows 98, create a startup disc.
Do a search of your Windows directory for the file \"smartdrv.exe\". Copy to your startup disc.

Boot using the startup floppy.
At the prompt run smartdrv.exe
A:smatrdrv

start setup of 2k/xp now.