I've got a Dell desktop that I want to change the hard drive. It has a Dell OEM WinXP install and the licence sticker but I have no OEM WinXP disc. Don't have the recovery disc to hand. Can make one from the pc if needed/helpful. It all works :touch wood: How can I rebuild/reinstall WinXP on a new hard drive?

Secondly, anything to watch for when putting a new disk (probably SATA II) in what I think is a SATA machine? The spec. I've done a little searching and while most SATA II are backwards compatible (jumper settings to make it SATA) some are friendlier than others (Maxtor bad?)

Looking at spending £40ish on a drive, One of these if anyone has any recommendations

You could clone your old hard drive onto your new one but i presume you really want a fresh install. If you can make a recovery disc then do that, take out old hard drive, insert new drive and boot from CD/DVD drive, which will probably require a BIOS change and go through the installation process.

Whatever route you go down i would make sure you have backed up all your vital documents on the old hard drive just in case.

One of the differences between SATA & SATA II is speed. However i believe if the controller on the motherboard does not support SATA II it defaults to SATA, or a jumper can be used on the SATA II drive.

Borrow a Win XP CD or download a CD image.

If you're at Gaydon tomorrow I'll burn you an SP2 disc.

You can use that CD and your CoA

Borrow a Win XP CD or download a CD image.

If you're at Gaydon tomorrow I'll burn you an SP2 disc.

You can use that CD and your CoA

Not at Gaydon but from previous threads I thought you couldn't just use a copy of WinXP and insert the licence key from the side of the box :confused:

You could clone your old hard drive onto your new one but i presume you really want a fresh install. If you can make a recovery disc then do that, take out old hard drive, insert new drive and boot from CD/DVD drive, which will probably require a BIOS change and go through the installation process.

The Dell has one of those hidden recovery programmes so if I make a "recovery disk" as prompted that would allow me to install it on a clean disc? As though the original HD had died? Surely that's too simple?

It would be nice to have a clean WinXP install rather than a bloated OEM version but I'd be happy with the base Dell install on a fresh drive.

The Dell has one of those hidden recovery programmes so if I make a "recovery disk" as prompted that would allow me to install it on a clean disc? As though the original HD had died? Surely that's too simple?

Yep thats correct. You should be able to burn a recovery cd / dvd and then reinstall the default dell XP onto a new hard drive. Best to install to new before formatting the old disk

Not sure if the recovery dvd will recreate the hidden (recovery) partition or not. My HP one didn't - thankfully!

Send me your address and I can drop a dell XP Pro disk in the post for you on monday.

Send me your address and I can drop a dell XP Pro disk in the post for you on monday.

Thanks for the offer. Will have a fiddle and send you the address if I'm stuck

Any recommendation on HD? (I've picked microdirect in the OP as I can pick it up today/tomorrow)

I know they're all much of a muchness but should I go for a certain spec rather than just the biggest for the money. Not forgetting which will be easiest to revert to SATA.

As you said most are much of a muchness, sometime you get a duff one, sometime you get lucky.

I'm a fan of Toshiba drives for laptops, not really sure why but they seem reliable *touches wood*.

Look for big numbers high cache, high rpm, high capacity.

Thanks for the offer. Will have a fiddle and send you the address if I'm stuck

Any recommendation on HD?

No probs. I have plenty of them , and when you use a Dell disk on a system with a Dell motherboard you don't need to activate windows or even enter a product key.

As for which drive to buy , The data recovery experts - RAID recovery and data coversion / extraction

I know that laptops have a recovery partition or you can use a CD image.

But you can use an XP CD to re-install windows then use the key at the side of the machine to complete the activation.

I sent a CD to a friend who used it to re-install windows as she didnd have the OEM discs that came with her machine then she used her own code, and it worked.

Be aware that if you go the recovery disc option you'll be reverting to an 'as from factory' setup i.e. as you very first ran it.

I might be stating the obvious but have you backed up any passwords, logins, Outlook pst files, and any other 'important to you' files ?

Be aware that if you go the recovery disc option you'll be reverting to an 'as from factory' setup i.e. as you very first ran it.

I might be stating the obvious but have you backed up any passwords, logins, Outlook pst files, and any other 'important to you' files ?

Happy with the factory setup, I'm not a fussy user. Docs/photos should already be backed up but I was going to leave the original drive as is and just take it out as a further backup.

Haven't used outlook (or any email client) for 2 years so it shouldn't be a problem if I lose them . In general got so many logins and passwords for things I an keep track of it all. I've got my laptop too so at least I'm not cutting myself off completely whilst reinstalling.

Rollox anyway. Been out bought a drive today, got the pc out of its hiding place, sorted files where needed only to discover I don't have any blank CDs to hand to make a restore disc

****... a... duck. I sucessfully re-installed XP only to find that I had left half the drive unpartitioned. So I'm going to do it all again. What a ****.

On the plus side it looks like a clean version of XP with none of the Dell support stuff or McAfee and the like

On the plus side it looks like a clean version of XP with none of the Dell support stuff or McAfee and the like

I think that comes on the other disks dell suppiles. Something like support and utillites iirc.

****... a... duck. I sucessfully re-installed XP only to find that I had left half the drive unpartitioned. So I'm going to do it all again.

Take at look at GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD - LiveCD that allow resizing of partitions

Take at look at GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD - LiveCD that allow resizing of partitions

Too late for that, I've re-partitioned and 90% formatted the first install

OK, when you've finished do something really useful to you

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

A bare-bones version of paid up one but should prove useful.

Macrium Reflect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not tried it (am on Acronis TrueImage 11) but supposed to be pretty good AND a lifesaver.

OK, when you've finished do something really useful to you

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

A bare-bones version of paid up one but should prove useful.

Macrium Reflect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not tried it (am on Acronis TrueImage 11) but supposed to be pretty good AND a lifesaver.

Will take a look at that.

Seems ok, AV and stuff installed, been through a few iterations of Windows Update before I gave up for the night. Not sure if its all done yet though. Then to replace the important software.

Just missing a spare SATA cable to move stuff off the old disk. Grrr.

Just missing a spare SATA cable to move stuff off the old disk. Grrr.

I can bung one in the post if you're not in rush:)

I can bung one in the post if you're not in rush:)

Cheers Dave, I might take you up on that.

No rush.

As posted on the IE8 thread. It all seems to be working ok except for IE8. Won't really know how its working till I start putting other stuff back on it and use it properly.

Cheers Dave, I might take you up on that.

No rush.

As posted on the IE8 thread. It all seems to be working ok except for IE8. Won't really know how its working till I start putting other stuff back on it and use it properly.

Just PM you're address and I'll do it today. I looking at one now