Question : How to install Win2K to a Toshiba Portege 3440CT when  the PCMCIA CD-Rom will not power up when booting from floppy or HDD

Toshiba Portege 3440CT had Win98.  I wanted to upgrade to Win2k.  I put in the Win2K Install CD, but it hit an application page fault midway through and stopped... So I decided to reformat the HDD and do a clean install.  

Problem: When I switch on the notebook, F2 gives me the option to select the boot device. If I boot from floppy (as in a normal OS installation) the Noteworthy/Port PCMCIA CD-Rom drive is not powered up by the machine (light goes off as soon as I select boot drive as floppy).  So after booting from floppy (I tried Win98 and Win2K boot disks) Setup cannot proceed because the CD-Rom, where the Installation files are, has not been powered up so the boot/setup programs cannot find it and do not recognize it.  Same is true if I boot from HDD, in that power to the PCMCIA CD-Rom is turned off as soon as another boot device is selected.

If I choose to boot from the CD-Rom, power stays on, the Win2k setup files are read into memory, but I get a blue stop error when Setup tries to start Win2000, and it says "inaccessible boot device".  I also tried making a boot CD that contained the whole Win2k setup files, but once I booted with it the PC would only recognize the boot files, not any of the Win2k instalation folders that I put on the CD.

I downloaded a boot disk from Toshiba,but got the same result, in that the setup wont proceed because the CD never powers up when booting from floppy or HDD.

The floppy is a USB-connected external Toshiba unit.  There are no internal drives in the notebook. I DID upgrade the latest BIOS but it did not help.

Any hints????

Answer : How to install Win2K to a Toshiba Portege 3440CT when  the PCMCIA CD-Rom will not power up when booting from floppy or HDD

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