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Genius!!!! I am going to try this.  So my old hard drive is still good?  My computer kept saying no bootable devices found.  And Dell said I needed a new hard drive. So I purchased one.

Thanks so much. The OS disc I got for my desktop I guess is a home disc.  Are you saying I cannot use the driver  and utilities disk with my desk top for the laptop.  I have the battery out of the laptop and the hard drive installed.  So now do I put the battery back in and turn it on and then go to downloads for the drivers on the laptop?

I guess they just want you to buy up the Vista.  And you are right, you are probably smarter than they are.  They  have little nitwiches sitting there just trying to sell you something.   I think the one I was speaking with was in India could hardly understand her!

Reply

Hi, SMcKinzey:

First, you can use the OS disc that came with your desktop as long as it's the same flavor (home or pro).

Second, all of your drivers can be downloaded from Downloads (click Support above to get there).

Third, you can order replacment discs by going to this page.

Now, you're probably asking yourself, Why couldn't Dell support tell me this? The answer is simple. I'm smarter than they are!! :emotion-2:

Hi, SMcKinzey:

First, you can use the OS disc that came with your desktop as long as it's the same flavor (home or pro).

Second, all of your drivers can be downloaded from Downloads (click Support above to get there).

Third, you can order replacment discs by going to this page.

Now, you're probably asking yourself, Why couldn't Dell support tell me this? The answer is simple. I'm smarter than they are!! :emotion-2:

Sorry, but there's no way to tell if your old hard drive is good or not based on the limited information you provided. You need to run the Dell diagnostics on the drive to tell.

Hi, SMcKinzey:

I believe I said you could use the XP disc if it matches the version, home or pro, between your desktop and laptop.

Obviously, you cannot use the drivers disc, but you can download all of the drivers, as I explained above. You should click Support above, and go to Downloads to get all your drivers before you start. Make sure you follow these instructions for installing XP.

Anything else, check your manual!! If you've lost it, look it up in Support.

.

Breathe muto... breathe :emotion-3:

I'm going to sound like the grammar police here, but that post is very hard to read, due to the lack of paragraphs, and an absence of capital letters at the start of new sentences - resulting in it being very hard to tell where one sentence ends, and the next starts?

And...

... install all the other drivers in whatever order you wish...

... that's bad advice!

Dell created a 'Drivers installation order' guide, specifically because all the drivers have to be installed in a certain order, to help avoid problems later :emotion-55:

However, your advice about downloading drivers in advance, downloading them to individual folders (chipset, audio, graphics, network etc etc), and copying them to an external source, is first rate :emotion-5:

That's exactly what I do myself.  'Nuff said :emotion-21:

Breathe muto... breathe :emotion-3:

:emotion-2: