Can't get WintoFlash to work
 

I have an older Dell Inspiron 700m laptop with a bad DVD drive. I tried re-installing WinXP Pro SP3 by installing the OS on a flash drive using WintoFlash. This laptop has a BIOS boot setting for a USB drive and sees the flash drive but doesn't run it. Anyone have a possible fix? Thanks.

OEM Dell Inspiron 700m 710m IDE/ATA DVDRW DVD BURNER Drive ND-6500A, T6181 on eBay!

ASUS USB 2.0 Black External Slim CD/DVD Writer Model SDRW-08D2S-U - Newegg.com

I just went through this with a Dell Desktop over here. Just get the optical drive glc linked to or similar and save yourself some trouble and time.

I also had a similar problem with a Dell. I think my main issue was that the BIOS was not properly configured. I had the primary boot set to removable devices. But there was another setting that I had to change. It was labeled as "Hard disk boot priority" and changed it to USB. Hope you get it figured out.

Tried an external DVDRW drive and the laptop wouldn't recognize it, so I guess my only option is to replace the internal drive itself. Don't ever buy used stuff from eBay. The seller on this thing really scammed me.

Eject the bad drive and try the external again.

Tried that. Still didn't recognize the external drive. Even set it as the slave since it would be the secondary master in the BIOS.

Is your external USB? If so, you don't set it to anything in the bios, you just have to make sure USB devices are in the bios boot list.