Upgraded an old dell; something went wrong.

[hickfarm]

You have to enter your bios and change your boot options. Most of the time it is either the "delete of F2" button to get in. Should say at the boot screen. Once you do that change the first boot device to CD and then change the secondary one to Hard Drive. Save these changes and reboot. It should ask if you want to boot from CD and from there it is a piece of cake.

Install Windows XP Pro

Step seven is where it shows how to reformat and clear the partition and such.

 

[Nagasama]

my advice is to create 2 partitions...
i made my c partition 50gb and it holds only the OS and updates and such
my e partition is the remainer of the same 160 hdd, it holds all my miscellaneous stuff (drivers, music, pictures and such). my games are housed on a second seperate hdd.
in any event, with 2 partitions like i said above, if you have to reformat because your OS gets corrupted by a virus or bad overclock or just screwed up you dont have to erase all your data. just the OS partition. you will have to reinstall drivers, but if you have good disc management, they will be all together and that is easy easy...easier than finding all the discs/downloading them would be. it has made my life MUCH easier on several occasions. just my suggestion.

 

[The Stoned Ape]

You have to enter your bios and change your boot options. Most of the time it is either the "delete of F2" button to get in. Should say at the boot screen. Once you do that change the first boot device to CD and then change the secondary one to Hard Drive. Save these changes and reboot. It should ask if you want to boot from CD and from there it is a piece of cake.

These problems seem never-ending. I went into BIOS-advanded setup. First boot device is CD-dvd, second my hardrive. Nothing changed but after a few attempts hoping it will randomly work the first screen on my monitor is now my motherboard. It allows me to change by boost options with F11. The problem with that is that the only options are my hardrive and floppy. No CD-DVD. I'm now just thinking about going to wal-mart/circuit city and buying an overpriced SATA dive.

 

[Nick]

I'm surprised you got an ATX board into a dell case

So when you boot from the CD it dosn't actually boot? I suggest trying an old drive if you have one, an old IDE CD drive will do fine. It's worth looking at the possibilities before spending money.

 

[Dauntae]

just a silly question, Is this the XP disk that came with the dell or is it a windows OEM or retail XP disk. If it came with a PC it won't work on any othe MB than the one it came with.

Dauntae

 

[dark strike1]

^^Yep Yep. I will have to agree, I made this mistake when I was a youngster.

 

[KSoD]

just a silly question, Is this the XP disk that came with the dell or is it a windows OEM or retail XP disk. If it came with a PC it won't work on any othe MB than the one it came with.

Dauntae

Helo,

The disk that came with the Dell is a OEM one and tailored for the Dell system. It wont install cause it doesnt work with SATA drives. Not to mention that you have to buy a new copy of Windows cause you cant use the one from your Dell. That violates the Windows EULA.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[Nagasama]

hooray for anti-piracy!

 

[hickfarm]

hooray for anti-piracy!

Man i hope that is sarcastic.


Anyways just keep going at it. Computers are so much trial and error.

 

[Nagasama]

lol hickfarm i just love that anti-piracy! laws and agreements and contracts! yeehaw!