Replying to How To Install Windows On A Drive Alone

ouch! But this is frankly stupid! What will happen when the battery will die, after ten years usage?

exactly... utterly shortminded...

CMOS battery is soldered to the board

ouch! But this is frankly stupid! What will happen when the battery will die, after ten years usage?

yea... i'm wanting to install Windows XP because i find Windows 7 Starter to be a bit slow on my netbook... BIOS password locks me off from actually making any changes to it (just misplaced the pwd in my head... stupid me)... been spending hours searching online for alternative solution with no luck

now i dismantled the laptop to find that the CMOS battery is soldered to the board (i have zero experience in soldering) so i'm stuck with Windows 7

If you have another laptop, you could try it.
However, if you do this, you could experience bluescreen at boot on your own laptop.
Easily repairable when booting from the Windows CD, whicn unfortunately is precisely what you cannot currently do.

i'm wanting to install Windows XP on my laptops hard-drive... right now i can't get access to BIOS as i have misplaced my password in my head...

is this possible? i just wanna know if there's a way i can just throw XP on to the HD and plug it back into the Laptop and boot and hopefully fix up drivers and stuff on it

help please