How the hell am I supposed to boot this Dell sx270?

[Woodcutter11]

So, I found this Dell OptiPlex sx270. But it has no built-in cd drive. I've got a portable cd drive but that's not working since it's USB. And there's no operating system on the HDD neither. Do I have to buy a new cd drive for it to work, or is there another solution?

[URL=http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=optiplex+SX270&cat=sup&x=0&y=0]DELL Support Search[/URL]

[IMG_THUMB]http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/8387/img0359d.jpg[/IMG_THUMB]

[Protocol7]

Probably has an option to boot from USB.

[Woodcutter11]

In the BIOS it says the USB device is not installed..

[Protocol7]

Chances are the USB is fried, but I guarantee if you open up the computer you can plug in an IDE cable to use a regular CD drive.

[Woodcutter11]

It suddenly booted from the harddrive! It seems to have Windows XP installed.

But it takes ages to load..

[b]edit:[/b]

2.4GHz Pentium 4
:suicide:

[Knutmora]

Overclock it. :c00l:

[dArKnEsS_2]

Format + Some Lightweight Linux Distro

[Woodcutter11]

Yeah.. One problem still remains. I just opened it and theres 0 numbers of IDE plugs. Formatting it and installing a new OS would be impossible. Unless you come up with something.

[Knutmora]

No SATA either?

[GunfighterJ]

[QUOTE=Woodcutter11;24642638]It suddenly booted from the harddrive! It seems to have Windows XP installed.

But it takes ages to load..

[b]edit:[/b]

2.4GHz Pentium 4
:suicide:[/QUOTE]

My old computer has a Pentium 4. It still works amazingly.

[Woodcutter11]

The harddrive is extremely odd and tiny. Definently not a SATA.

[BlackBirdNL]

is there no recovery partion on the hard drive?

[Woodcutter11]

Nope. Only one partion.

[{ABK}AbbySciuto]

Take a picture of the hard drive. It's possible (however unlikely) that it's a SCSI hard drive.

[BlackBirdNL]

you could try contacting Dell

[dArKnEsS_2]

Wait, does the motherboard have ANY SATA ports? If so, SATA CD Drive to the rescue!

[Woodcutter11]

Pictures coming up...

And no, it has no SATA ports.

[b]edit:[/b]
It says the harddrive is a PATA.

[URL=http://img412.imageshack.us/f/img0362rk.jpg/]Image[/URL]

[b]edit:[/b]
I got it! My IDE to USB cable works on the harddrive. Maybe I could plug it in my main computer.

[editline]07:55AM[/editline]

How do i get an OS on an external drive through USB?

[BlackBirdNL]

there are special version of os's for usbs

[Zolofto]

Two choices
1: Open case, see if it has an IDE connectors. Hook up a old CD-ROM to that.

2: make an install on a PC (just put the OS, don't do the actual install portion), and transplant that HDD to the optiplex.

[Woodcutter11]

I just installed Ubuntu on the harddrive through my main. And now my main computer regrets to boot without the 'external' harddrive plugged-in. And the OptiPlex does not want to load Ubuntu.

Everything is going wrong. :saddowns:

[editline]11:07PM[/editline]

Maybe i should just get DOS 6.22 instead.

[Zolofto]

Does BIOS recognize the harddrive?

[Blarg190]

Lol your main is looking for grub. You just overwrote your boot sector.

[Woodcutter11]

How can i fix that?