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14505
June 8th, 2011 06:00
How can I get a Dell Dimension E510 to boot from a Windows XP Professional CD on start up? and 2 small questions need answered.
How can I get a Dell Dimension E510 to boot from a Windows XP Professional CD on start up?
My cousin gave me his old Windows XP Professional (32 bit) CD, which he does not use or need anymore. However, I do not know how to boot it up on start up in order to start the process of reformatting my entire hard drive.
Reason for reformatting, is because I think it is needed and professional is better than my stock media center.
I tried to change the put sequence to first boot from CD then HDD, but nothing happened.
Any clues?
CD/ DVD is working fine.
My question is it all right to reformat my whole computer. I updated my CPU to a Pentium D 3.4 GHz, and it required a A07 BIOS update. Will it keep A07 if I reformat?
And is it all right if I get rid of the hidden dell partitions in the process and just make my hard drive just one partition? If I can get this OS to work, I do not want or need the hidden stock partition. I rather have the extra HDD space if I get make my HDD one big partition without losing my A07 BIOS.
fireberd
9 Legend
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33.4K Posts
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June 8th, 2011 06:00
See THIS
There are two partitions on the hard drive. The Dell recovery partition and the Hardware diagnostics partition. I would leave the hardware diagnostic partition alone, you may need that some day.
XP Media Center is basically XP PRO with the media center additions. Unless you are on a big LAN somewhere you won't really gain anything with XP Pro. However, one caution, if the XP PRO has already been activated you can't activate it again so check on that before you use it. Older Operating systems were not a problem and you could install it on more than one system but starting with XP it all changed.
Shpati
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June 9th, 2011 02:00
What exactly does the hardware diagnostic partition do? And why would I need it?
So is it safe to remove the recovery partition as long as I can install a new OS on it?
muto
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June 9th, 2011 06:00
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RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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June 9th, 2011 15:00
And unless you have an internal floppy diskette drive in this system, you won't be able to install the SATA hard drive drivers on this system. You need to create a floppy with the SATA drivers in advance and have it ready so when the Windows Installer asks if you want to install the SATA drivers, you can insert the floppy and press F6 to install the drivers. You can't load them from an external USB floppy drive or from a CD.
You will be able to run XP Pro using the hard drive in ATA mode, but you'll lose any benefits from using the SATA drivers and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.
Ron
Shpati
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June 10th, 2011 01:00
I do not have a floopy drive,
Can my system still run without the SATA drivers? Or is that a risk.
muto
2 Intern
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872 Posts
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June 10th, 2011 06:00
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RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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June 10th, 2011 11:00
There's no harm/risk of running your system without SATA drivers.
You just won't be able to use a RAID setup with 2 hard drives, if you ever wanted to do that. And you won't have the advantages of using Intel Matrix Storage Manager which may increase performance of the hard drive.
Ron
delluser1999
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January 8th, 2013 11:00
windows xp media center edition is windows xp professional with all the extras (theme, programs ect.)