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Moving HD from one Dell laptop to another
My HD failed in my Dell Studio 1558. Fortunately, I had access to another HD from my son's Dell laptop, which he had dropped - making it a suitable source for parts. I have the recovery CDs for my Studio laptop, so I figured it would be as simple as moving the hard drive, popping in the 1st recovery CD and letting it do it's thing. That seemed to work fine, except once the process completed and the laptop restarted, I was left with a PXE error message telling me no Operating System could be found. I understand the PXE error is related to the laptop trying to boot from a network drive.
I've run the diagnostics during startup, and the replacement hard drive is recognized, and shows the correct size of 500GB. I've even trying doing a clean install of Windows 7 from a retail version that I have, but as I tried to do that the system told me that Windows could not be installed in that partition because another OS copy was already there.
What do I need to do in order to get this laptop back up and running? I honestly thought it was going to be as simple as popping the new hard drive in the laptop, runnig the recovery disks, and then maybe downloading and installing some updated drivers. Unfortunately, I'm not even making it past the recovery / restarting of the laptop. I need to get this laptop up and running again so I can finish up my taxes (I have a backup of the system on an external Seagate GoFlex drive, so I should be good there...hopefully).
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.
missleman
94 Posts
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March 7th, 2014 13:00
Did you delete all partions on the hard drive before you attempted to load Windows 7? I swap hard drives all the time from one laptop to another but the hard drive has to have all partitions deleted and then format the disk. Load Windows 7 after that and all should be well. Forget about recovery CD's.
cah14522_me
3 Posts
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March 7th, 2014 13:00
How do I delete those partitions? I have not been able to get Windows up and running yet. I've only run the recovery CD process (which seemed to work). If you could tell me how to delete the partitions, I will give that a shot. Once I do that, do I use my retail Windows 7 CD to install, or the version that is on the recovery CDs with the OEM code that is on the laptop?
Thanks!
missleman
94 Posts
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March 7th, 2014 13:00
First....go into BIOS and change the boot order on your laptop. Put CD/DVD drive first and hard drive second. Load your retail Windows 7 CD in the CD drive and shut off the laptop. Start the laptop and wait for the "Press any key to boot from CD" and tap a key. The Windows 7 install routine will take over and load the appropriate software. It will display all the partitions on the hard drive. Click on them one at a time and delete them. When the partitions become one....choose format and format the disk. The Windows 7 install will usually split the large partition and keep a small one on reserve. Piece of cake from there.