My laptop needs repair but the CDROM does not work. I need repair it by use of the original CD that came with it. How do I do that?

System details: Compaq EvoN1020v, 3,5 years old. XP professional SP2 and all updates, NTFS, floppy drive, one hard disk.

It seems as if the boot sector is damaged (24 kb in damaged sector found by scanning by use of NTFS reader). I guess that happened when I cleaned out virii and spyware, and that system files either were deleted or damaged.

Have tried everything but the computer won´t boot. Empty screen, fan working ....nothing more. Boot menu is inacessible.

So, I somehow need to feed it the CD, try do a repair install. I have tried with an external CDROM but, it will not boot from USB. I enabled usb in BIOS and changed the boot order to boot first from "removeable devices" but that obviously meant floppy drive only...

I have copied ntldr, netdetect.com and boot.ini from the installation CD to the hard drive (floppy fed). Still dead.

Microsoft´s floppy set for XP professional has been tried but does not work because the program just asks for the CD when all 6 floppies are loaded.
Other floppy boot devices have also been tried, at no avail.
So, now i wonder if there´s a way to place the content of the CD onto the hard disk and have it boot from there?
My son has an Acer with an image of the installation files (no installation CD came with it) - I on his computer now - and I wonder if i could do the same with my compaq?

I will greatly appreciate help, any suggestion is greatly welcomed!

Hi Karin,

Welcome to PCHF.

One question I'm a little confused about. If your hard drive is NTFS, how were you able to access your c: drive from floppy?

Thank you for replying so fast! I used NTFS reader for DOS from Avira. Fits into one floppy, I can defragment with it (did) check and run a socalled Chkdsk/G to ix problems That did unfortunately not work :-( NTFS.com Data Recovery Software. NTFS Reader for DOS NTFS DOS. explains more about his tool. It´s the only floppy tool able to read NTFS files, I think....not sure (sorry, got the wrong link at first, now edited and correcte)

I was aware this was in production, but didn't realise it was released, Avira will come in handy.. thanks.

Should be chkdsk /f

You should be able to repair the boot record this way:
Download and extract mbrfix.exe onto a floppy from here: Systemintegrasjon AS
When you boot using Avira, type: MbrFix /drive 0 fixmbr /yes

So did i think . but it says CHKDSK/G i downloaded to another computer (my son´s XP home) and ran it from there and created the floppy. the manual says CHKDSK/G

Thank you very much, I will try that and post back when done. I already have this file. Kåre Smith emailed it to me (very nice of him!) but I didn´t get it to work and gave up. I will try again, follow your description. I´ll post back when done. Thanks again