Can't boot from CD-Drive Toshiba XM-1702B - LED light flashes orange continuously - (Inspiron 3200)

Hello all, I know this is going to be quite long, but I really am
stuck, and would truly appreciate any kind of help please.

Until recently, my CD-Drive worked normally. Then I decided my
Inspiron 3200 laptop needed to be refreshed so I chose to put on
Windows 2000. I reformatted and partitioned the hard-drive using a
bootable floppy using fdisk and the format commands. At this point,
the laptop was now without any OS. Switching the internal drive bay
from the floppy-drive to the Toshiba XM-1702B CD-Drive (which came
with laptop originally), I restarted the laptop, inserted the Windows
2000 CD, and went into the BIOS to change the boot sequence. I also
noted that the CD-drive was detected within the BIOS (like usual), and
restarted the laptop again.

Upon reboot, it just came up with the message "Invalid system disk,
Replace the disk, and then press any key". This message of course
comes up because there is no OS on the drive. I thought to myself, why
does it skip over the CD-drive and not boot from the Windows 2000 CD?

Well, I eliminated the usual suspects. I rechecked the BIOS, the boot
sequence was being saved, and the CD-Drive was listed first. The
CD-Drive was being detected on startup and in the BIOS. I ensured that
the CD was in fact bootable. The system was able to boot using the
floppy drive with a bootable diskette, but I can only have one
internal drive connected at one particular time (i.e. either the
CD-Drive or the Floppy-drive, but not both). I also upgraded the BIOS
from A10 to A11 from Dell's website. Nothing helped. It just wasn't
booting from the CD-Drive, skips it or doesn't recognize it, for
whatever reason.

It did work before I started this. Instead, the drive just sits there
with its LED light continuously flashing orange, as long as the laptop
is powered up. Strange, I never noticed this behavior before with the
LED light. What does that constant flashing actually mean? A point to
note, it flashes and continues to do so as soon as the laptop is
powered up, with or without a CD in the drive. It also appears that
the CD never spins when inside. I do not have another drive to test
this with to eliminate the possibility that there is something wrong
with the CD-Drive, (but I highly doubt this as it worked before).

Then I thought, I can connect the floppy externally while leaving the
CD-Drive within the internal bay, boot from a floppy that provides
CD-Drive support, and run the setup of win2k from there. Great plan I
thought! So, the next steps I took was to connect the floppy-drive
EXTERNALLY using the cable provided by DELL for connecting it
externally (a parallel cable, similar to a printer cable). However,
the BIOS and system on boot-up failed to see or recognize the floppy
connected in this way. Instead, it booted up to the same Invalid
system disk message. Another dead-end? How do I make the system see it
or boot from it? In a BIOS setting? I played around with it, but to no
avail.

Could it be that because there is no OS currently on the hard-drive,
that a connection through a parallel port is undetectable? Could this
also be why the CD-Drive in the internal bay is not initially working
(no OS)? Consequently, I went to a store to get an external CD/floppy
drive that can connect externally through USB. But, I was told by the
store tech guy that with no OS, you don't have USB support, you need
Windows98 or higher. My options were getting smaller.

As a last resort, I tried another floppy-drive (from a different
laptop) connected externally through the parallel port, again no luck!
So what do I don now, I need to get an OS on this, this is frustrating
beyond belief. How do I do it?

That's the background, I realize it's long but I hope someone has read
this far. Now, here are my questions, any help is much appreciated:

1. What does the orange LED light on the CD-Drive continuously
flashing mean?

2. Can I create such a floppy that can boot using the floppy-drive
internally, and then have some process to write to the blank
hard-drive a bootable sequence program, that enables CD support? This
way, I can boot to the hard-drive and then run the setup from CD. Is
this at all possible?

3. Does not having an OS on a system not allow support for CD-Drives
to be bootable? So, even if they are detected within BIOS, because
there is no OS, it just cannot be booted from? Sounds weird to me,
just a theory. Maybe laptops or my laptop in particular (Inspiron 3200
with a Toshiba XM-1702B CD-Drive)?

4. Why does the system or BIOS not detect the floppy when it is
connected externally via the Parallel port cables? Same deal as
question 3, no OS, no support?

Agh! What do I do, please help me. I know it's been lengthy, but I
needed to let y'all know how far I've come along and the solutions
I've already tried, just to avoid any answers I've already attempted
myself. Thanks in advance.

JoVuNik.

 

Well, something's wrong, which I can't easily diagnose without the system in
front of me.

So, here's the work around.

Go to www.bootdisk.com

Download the Win98SE boot disk and make the required floppy.

Boot to that floppy.

Issue the following command:

SYS C:

that installs the bootable 98SE kernal on the harddrive.

Copy the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys to the hard drive.

Copy all the other files to the C:\DOS directory.

Make the appropriate changes in the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat to point to
C:\dos rather than a:

Shut down the machine, put the CD drive in and reboot. It should boot to a
C: prompt and have a letter accessible CD drive (likely Q: or D.

Change to the drive and navigate to the Windows 2000 setup directory and run
the setup program from there.

By the way, not all W2K CDs were bootable.

Tom

 

from a working computer, browse your win2k cd and look for the 'makeboot'
folder... there is a utility there that will create a set of four bootable
win2k floppy disks that will in turn reconize your cd rom and allow you to
install win2k.

 

Thanks Tom for your reponse, much appreciated. Following exactly what
you suggested, I've SYSed the hard-drive, copied over neccesary files
from the floppy, along with CD-Drive drivers, etc. After making the
neccessary adjustments, the laptop is booting from the harddrive. It
detects the CD-Drive, installs the drivers for the Toshiba XM-1702B.
So far so good,

....but, after having navigated to the D:\ (drive letter assigned to
CD-ROM), I typed dir to list the directory of any CD, but the reponse
I got was:

Not ready reading drive D
Abort, Retry, Fail?

The Orange LED light on the drive still blinking away non-stop. This
is leading me to think that there coould actually be something wrong
with the drive.

Any other thoughts ?

 

Either:

1) The CD is bad
2) The Drive is bad

I'd try another CD and rule out number 1.

Tom