I have an hp pavillion n5470 laptop. The dvd drive is not working. I want to upgrade to win 2000 pro. I have an external cdrom drive hooked up on usb, but it will not read from it. It says the drive is not accesable. Is it possible to use the usb as the main one or not?
Also the dvd drive is a toshiba sd-r2002 is there one that would be compatable with that?

It is definatly possible to use the usb cdrom as a primary cd. Check to make sure you have all the drivers for it.
If your internal drive is broken you can replace it. Laptop cd drives are expensive but they are avaliable. Just do a google search for the model number of your laptop cdrom.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Thanks, I have searched for that toshiba the cheapest one i can find is 140.00. I sure don't want to pay that. I can't find one that is compatable. I even tried google. Still nothing.

Have you tried HP? Any slim-CD drive should be compatible. Most often, you can use a USB device as a bootable drive, but not always, but you should still be able to install win2k pro off of the USB CD drive...
Does it not give any other error msgs?

Regards,
RaPTuRe

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

Yeah i tried hp they want $686.00 for the drive. I hate hp. So i tried Best Buy they want $576.00. So i did some looking around and found a compatable one on-line for $29.00. Why do people want to rip you off so bad? Anyway thanks for everyone's help it is appreciated. It is a Toshiba drive. How do you get the usb drive to install windows. Should i remove the internal drive, because i can't get it to read from the usb. not even in dos or the win 2000 setup screen. Guess i'll have to wait until the drive arrives.It gives an error that the drive is not accesssable

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by rumcooler on 10/21/04 03:38 AM.</EM></FONT></P>