Did they reformat the hard drive to reinstall the OS or did they use PCRestore to reset the hard drive to the way Dell shipped it?
Does the CD drive work or not? You'll probably need to get the CD to work, before you can go further, but you can try this in the meantime.
Reboot and press F8 before XP(?) starts to load. Pick Last Known Good from the menu. If that works, shut down normally and reboot normally.
If that doesn't work, you'll need to get the CD drive working so you can try a Repair/Reinstall of XP. If the repair works, you'll only have to reinstall all the XP updates and not all the drivers, software, and personal files.
I actually got a new HDD sent form Dell as Dell Tech Suport suggested it was broken after running a dianostics check.
Have issues now though as the VD drive doesn't seem to recognise the XP disks I am trying to install onto the new HDD......thought I could install via a USB device but again, it doesn't recognise the USB device.
You need to boot from the XP CD in order to format the drive and install XP. I don't know what a VD drive is. Do you get an error message trying to boot from the XP CD?
Can you boot another PC with the Dell XP CD? If you can, then the CD drive in this system may not be working.
I doubt you can install XP on the new hard drive from a USB device.
RoHe
10 Elder
•
45.2K Posts
0
July 27th, 2008 01:00
Did they reformat the hard drive to reinstall the OS or did they use PCRestore to reset the hard drive to the way Dell shipped it?
Does the CD drive work or not? You'll probably need to get the CD to work, before you can go further, but you can try this in the meantime.
Reboot and press F8 before XP(?) starts to load. Pick Last Known Good from the menu. If that works, shut down normally and reboot normally.
If that doesn't work, you'll need to get the CD drive working so you can try a Repair/Reinstall of XP. If the repair works, you'll only have to reinstall all the XP updates and not all the drivers, software, and personal files.
Ron
mikeymay
8 Posts
0
July 27th, 2008 06:00
Thanks RoHe
I actually got a new HDD sent form Dell as Dell Tech Suport suggested it was broken after running a dianostics check.
Have issues now though as the VD drive doesn't seem to recognise the XP disks I am trying to install onto the new HDD......thought I could install via a USB device but again, it doesn't recognise the USB device.
Back to the drawing board!!!
RoHe
10 Elder
•
45.2K Posts
0
July 27th, 2008 23:00
You need to boot from the XP CD in order to format the drive and install XP. I don't know what a VD drive is. Do you get an error message trying to boot from the XP CD?
Can you boot another PC with the Dell XP CD? If you can, then the CD drive in this system may not be working.
I doubt you can install XP on the new hard drive from a USB device.
Ron