Installing a new Primary HDD

[Spiral Photo]

Okay, so I've got a Dell Dimension 4100 from 2001. The Western Digital 60GB hard drive that came with it is now clicking. It won't stay on for more than 10 minutes before it goes to a blue screen and reboots.

I bought a little 20GB hard drive that I want to use to replace it, but the Windows XP Pro disc will NOT boot from the disc drive. In fact, none of the discs I have will boot from the disc drive. They boot and operate just find once I get Windows booted and the computer running with the old hdd, so I know it's not a faulty CD drive. The computer has an old Floppy drive that doesn't work anymore, and the PC wants to boot from it if it can't do it from the hard drive. I've got into the F8 Setup screen (which is actually F2 on my machine), and I can rearrange the order in which these devices boot, but no matter what I do, I simply cannot get it to boot from the disc drive during startup. I know the CD is okay. I got it to boot up just fine with its autoplay file using my laptop.

Help!!!

 

[Nitestick]

so the cd is set as the first boot device? the only thing i can think of is that the windows xp disc asks you to strike a key to boot from it, perhaps you missed that?

 

[Spiral Photo]

Yes, the CD drive is set to boot first, and I've looked for any kind of command to press a key or anything like that. It keeps trying to boot from the floppy no matter what I set it to. Even if I just completely disconnect, it'll say that the Floppy drive is experiencing problems (don't know the exact message, but that's the gist of it). It does, however, let me get past that point and it moves onto the next boot device....this is where I get the message about there be no "NTLDR".

 

[Nitestick]

hmmmmm . so what is the exact configuration of the drives, i.e primary master, slave etc.

 

[Spiral Photo]

CD drive
New HDD
DVD Drive
Floppy

 

[Spiral Photo]

Okay, so I'm going to take a different approach to this.

I have a laptop, and I have my new HDD in a USB enclosure. How do I install Windows onto this new drive from the laptop???

I've tried cloning the drive on my laptop, but the new one isn't large enough to do that because of all the stuff I have on the laptop. Is there a simple way to use my Windows XP install disc to install the OS on the USB drive????

 

[Avalanch3]

try this....

cd drive
dvd drive
floppy
new hdd

if this still doesnt work try this...

keep pressing F12 when u first turn your pc on...it will come up with a boot selction screen...select whichever drive you have the XP cd in



see how this goes

 

[Spiral Photo]

I just found that the coin battery on the motherboard is dead. Would this cause the issues I'm having???

 

[CrazeD]

I just found that the coin battery on the motherboard is dead. Would this cause the issues I'm having???

If it is completely dead then it is not saving the BIOS settings. So yes, that could be the problem.