Keeping hard drive

mightykyle

Solid State Member
Messages
17
I have a gateway 702 ge and im building another computer. i want to know if i keep the harddrive do i have to buy another copy of windows xp for the harddrive to work with the new computer of can i just stick it in and the computer will automatically work. if i do have to buy windows again how will i go about setting it up and not getting that gay gatewway screen during startup.
 
The HDD from the Gateway will not work in another pc as the os disk it has all sorts of proprietry crap on it and will not recognise the m/board, you may be able to run a repair install though it will require a Windows disk.

If the disks that came with the Gateway pc are "Restore Disks" then you will have to buy another copy of windows.

If it is a genuine Windows disk (not restore) then when you have the new pc up and running boot from your rom drive, create a partition, format it and install windows.
 
For legal purposes, you're suppose to buy another copy of Windows XP but come on, who really does that? I don't. The only thing that I can think of is some things might not work. PC may not boot or it might. The original hard drive has installation files related to the hardware of your old PC which may create big time conflicts with your new setup. I would do a clean installation of Windows XP on the old drive. If your old PC came with an OS CD, just use that. The operating system itself may also be on the recovery DVD but I don't know how to extract that. You can probably try to find the OS by browsing in the DVD, but I don't know if it's slipstreamed or all bundled up everywhere.
 
Absolutely. If it's a Windows XP installation disc, it will work. Should you have to call Microsoft to get it activated, just tell them Windows crashed and you had to do a reinstall.
 
Also how do i boot from my rom drive.create a partition, format it? lol can you plz take some time and give a newb a step by step way to do this lol
 
To boot off of the Windows disc first, you need to go into the system BIOS. Usually, that is done by pressing the "Del" key or F1 key right when the PC boots. It will usually tell you what key to press to "Enter Setup". Then change the boot order so that CD-ROM is the first boot device.

After that is done, save changes and restart PC. Be sure Windows XP disc is in the drive when you do that. It will detect it and go through the installation process. It will also give you a choice to reformat and partition it too so it's pretty easy. It's like a wizard.
 
do i choose reformat or partition? also will any crap from my older computer including crap like gateway support be in there. I want it to be stait up custom lol
 
If you reformat it, everything will be gone. The Gateway logo crap is from the BIOS ROM and not from the hard drive. I always like to give it good reformat first. You know, I actually like to use the FDISK utility to do that. This utility software is found from the Windows 98 CD. You can't get that anymore I think for XP. It works great if you can get that on a floppy. It reformats your hard drive and paritions it.

I would choose reformat and then parition it. Some partition it first and then reformat after the partition is created. Either way, you have to format each partition anyways so I don't think it really matter too much.
 
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