Upgraded an old dell; something went wrong.

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The Stoned Ape

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Ok so I had an old dell that I bought for $300 5 years ago. Recently I upgraded everything except the hardrive. I spent about $400 to make a decent gaming machine. Everything is compatible and everything fits in my new case yet when I turn on the computer I get the following message...

"Reboot and select proper boot device
or insert boot media in selected boot device and press any key to continue"

Now my friend who helped me make this comp isn't familiar with Pata hard drives (which is what I have). He thinks to fix this problem I will have to wipe the hardrive or buy a Sata hardrive. Money is currently tight so I am leaning towards wiping it but my main question is will that work? Everything is hooked up properly when my computer boots it doesn't make any outlandish sounds. Am I just screwed because I have a dell hardrive and non-dell everything else?
 
Pata is the same as IDE in most cases. I have a few questions though. What are all the parts that you replaced? I.E. ram, video card, processor, mobo? Did you reformat?
 
Pata is the same as IDE in most cases. I have a few questions though. What are all the parts that you replaced? I.E. ram, video card, processor, mobo? Did you reformat?

I replaced the ram, mother board, power supply, video card, case, heat sink, and processor. The only things I kept from my old dell were the hard drive and DVD drive. I have not reformated.
 
When you replace a mobo you pretty much have to reformat, although in some cases I have heard you do not. But replacing the mobo is basically building a new machine due to the fact that all the parts will act differently than before. So what I am saying is that you need to reformat your Pata drive....if you want to keep all your information from that drive you will need to either transfer it to another computer, or buy another hard drive and use your pata drive as a secondary.

Also you cannot reformat with the windows cd from dell, you will need a vendor copy of windows xp (which you can get off ebay) or windows vista which is in every retailer now.

You should have asked us before upgrading that dell, we could have assisted you with buying the best "bang for your buck" parts. But hopefully we can get this rig up and running :)
 
That is not actually a bad deal. You should have spent a little more on your video card though. Instead of a 8500GT maybe you should have spent an extra 25 and opted for a 2600XT. Or you could have spent just a little under a 100$ and bought a 8800GS or 9600GSO.

You went a little overboard with the ram. 2 Gigs of ram would have been more then enough. Besides anything that requires 4gigs of ram your CPU probably couldn't handle too well.
 
My next question is going to make me look like an idiot but oh well. Reformating my computer without backing up any files is as easy as putting my XP cd in my dvd drive and going through the steps? It seems so simple to me so I'm guessing it is more complex.
 
What you do is boot from the cd, then let it load, select install new windows, format your NTSC petition, and after its done formatting install windows using NTSC. That is if you don't have anything to back-up.
 
When I put my XP cd in my dvd drive it will load for a second and then stop. The DVD drives light goes off and nothing happens. I still get the same message. I double checked and everything is hooked up properly.
 
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