Comments on: How Do I Install Windows 2000 Pro On A Dell Optiplex G\x115 Without Recovery Disk?

By: dragonfi…

dragonfi… — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:50:25 +0000

if your copy of windows is genuine then all u need to is to boot your pc from cd rom drive
insert cd boot up and let windows install its self all you do is follow the instructions when prompted

By: dragonfi…

dragonfi… — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:50:25 +0000

If you have a COA sticker on the machine(which u should) u need a copy of win2kPro or w/e u se ur code and voila or order one from http://www.dell.com with the service tag on the back of your machine it should be 6 digits in length ©_©

By: minty359

minty359 — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:50:25 +0000

Did you format the disk and make a partition active? If you did, put your boot disk back in and copy the system files to the c: drive. At the command prompt, type sys c:
You will have to go looking for smartdrv.exe to download if you don’t have it. Put it on the c: drive or expect to take 4 to 6 hours to install.
Restart your system with the boot disk or from the CD. and get to a command prompt. Go to the C: drive and type smartdrv.exe /c < enter>
Then,
From the win2k CD, go to the i386 directory and type
winnt .
This is the method used to do a manual install.
I hope your comfortable with formatting and using fdisk to get your disk set up correctly, I’m pretty sure that’s why your getting that missing system error.
By the way, if you have the win2k CD, you don’t need to use the system recovery disks, but they may have the dos commands you need , format, fdisk and smartdrv on them.
Good luck

By: dragonfi

dragonfi — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:50:24 +0000

2 things
the cd of windows 2000, is it bootable? ( try it if the optiplex supports cd rom booting ), if so boot to the CD and go from there
also it helps to have smartdrv.exe up and running when installing win2k or xp as it really speeds up the install process, but then you need a good boot disk and a knowledge of dos and edit ( and editing the autoexec.bat file on the boot )
if the windows 2000 is not bootable ( and so far evey copy of windows 2000 that i have run across has been ) then you need to boot to a floppy or cd rom , format the hardrive ( fat32 or ntfs ), then run the install ( winnt.exe ) from the command prompt
hopefully you know the cd key for the install unless it’s a OEM unattended install then it will input fields for you.