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jf176 wrote:

My current hard drive has started to make a noise similar to the alert sound you hear on TV when they test the emergency broadcast system.  I called Dell and since my computer is under warranty until today the said they would send me another 80 GB Toshiba hard drive.  They sent a refurbished one which appears to be ok.  Per the technicians instructions when the disk was ordered I inserted the new drive and loaded windows XP media center edition.  I then inserted the blue CD that said Drivers and Utilities already installed on your computer.  But I just got an information screen and it appeared nothing was loaded.  Also the Dell background on the desktop that was there when I first bought the computer is not there.

 

I took out the new hard drive and put in the old one and everything is still working fine on the hard drive.  Otherwise I could not access the internet or do anything else.  I bought DVDs so I could copy my files from my old hard drive and think I did this using the Sonic Digital Media Program that came with the computer.  A few things did not copy since the program said it was in use.  I have all my programs and passwords for my wireless router, printer, internet explorer and other programs on my hard drive.  As it would take days to reload programs, reset passwords and get everything going by reloading everything from scratch how can I transfer everything and have things running normally?  I bought a pack of DVD-RW disks and hope I can transfer things that way.  Since I still have 55.9 GB of free space on my old 80 GB drive and each DVD is 4.7 GB I think that may work.  I have loaded just about everything under Local Disk C: on two disks.

 

No, that won't work.  You can't copy programs in that manner.  If you use the drive manufacturer's software, you can copy old to new drive by going to their site and downloading it.  Otherwise, you'll likely need to reinstall everything.

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jf176 wrote:

I would like to thank those who responded and ask for help in finishing this.  I contacted Acronis and according to what they told me I can only clone my hard drive if I can directly link to another hard drive.  Since I do not have one this is not an option.  I did try to transfer my programs, windows, and other folders using DVDs and overwrite existing files but as you said this did not work.  So what I want to do is go back to a completely blank drive as Dell had sent me and install everything from scratch and then transfer my documents and other nonprogram files using DVDs.

 

How do I put the drive back in a completely blank state as I got it from dell from their warrenty replacement department?  Looking back over previous posts I see that there is a program free program called active @ KillDisc but I see that there may be problems with these programs.  Isn't there just some function key I can press?

 

Boot to the XP CD, remove all partitions, make a new one, format it, and install XP.

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jf176 wrote:

This did not work but I may not have done things right since I do not know too much about computers.  I inserted the windows XP DVD that Dell sent with the computer and saw two options  - custom install or advanced.  I chose advanced since I wanted to erase all the files I copied from DVDs that are not working and start over.  However the program asked me to type in the 25 digit alpha numeric code that came with the program.  All Dell gave me was the operating system disk (says operating system already installed on your computer - reinstallation DVD) in a plastic box.  The label on the plastic wrap does not have the code I need.  So I do not know what else to do at this point.

 

Right, you didn't do it right.  Reboot the computer, while it's booting hit F12.  When the menu comes up, open the drive and put in the XP DVD.  Then, pick boot from CD and it will BOOT FROM the XP DVD.

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jf176 wrote:

I hit F12 as the system was starting and it took me to a boot menu.  I then selected CD/DVD and hit enter.  Then it asked me to select something.  there was only one option presented: profile 1.  when I selected that it took me right back to the desktop I had before except this time I got an error message and a debug screen from something else I had added previously.  Please tell me specifically any additional steps I should take when I get in the boot menu.  Thank you.

 

Was the Windows DVD in the drive?  Doesn't sound like it was...

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jf176 wrote:

Yes.  It was in the CD/DVD drive.  I selected the option CD/DVD from the boot menu and hit enter.  I did not select hard drive as the option.  After I selected CD/DVD I was taken to another screen where it asked for another selection.  There was a count down timer on the screen which said it would select profile 1 unless something else was specified.  From what I remember Profile 1 was the only thing that was in the list to choose from.  I will check back early tommorow morning.  Thank you.

That's exactly where you made your mistake.   It was telling you to select boot from CD or it would boot from the hard drive if you did nothing, and you did nothing.  This time you need to watch the screen and do what it says to boot from the CD/DVD, it should say Hit the Space Bar.