OEM Floppy drive, question, please help

[aman74]

I can't find a retail version in black, plus I want to spend as little as possible on it. If it's a bare drive, what will I need to get it going, just a cable and a driver? The thing is that I'm building a PC from scratch, so I need it to work right away in case I need to use a boot disk (not sure if needed for XP). How does this and a cd-rom work before an OS is installed, this is my first time building.

So, I put the PC together. Turn it on and hopefully the MB will post. Then I don't know what to do from there. Will my CD-rom and Floppy work so I can install the OS? Does the XP cd format my hard drive? Do I need a pre-install cd? I'm not sure if I'm getting one since I'm getting an OEM version.


Thanks!

 

[BHeemsoth]

for the drive...newegg.com is your friend.

 

[Kanoril]

So here I go for my very first post in this forum...

Floppy Drives and CD-Rom Drives do work without an OS installed...if that wasn't the case, it would get kinda hard to install an OS, wouldn't it?
Ok...so after you've build the whole computer you boot it...the MB will, normally post (in case everything is connected correctly). During the first seconds of the booting process, you should press the "Del" button, as you need to access the BIOS.
Once in the BIOS you have to set the bootsequence the way you need it. Of course you can't boot from the HDD, as there is nothing to boot. So set the bootsequence to boot from your CD-ROM frist. Where you find these settings should be in the manual of your MB.

So after chaning that, the system will reboot...now would be a good time to put the Windows CD in the CD-ROM. It will automaticlly boot and you will then follow the instructions on screen (formatting, setting up partitions, stuff like that).
And that's it.

Oh and you don't need drivers for a floppy...and you don't need special drivers for a CD-ROM either..there are drivers coming with Windows which work for all.

Hope this was understandable...haven't written english in a while...

[edit]Ok...no

 

[aman74]

Yes, very helpfull, thanks! I also bought an OEM version of Windows XP and don't know if that was a mistake. Someone on here said it doesn't come with manuals, but I called Microsoft and they said it should have everything that the retail version has, but it can't be installed on any other computer than what you ordered it with. With my order was only a MB, a video card, and CPU. Now, does this mean I can't install it onto another hard drive ever? What if I want to put it on two seperate hard drives for dual boot. Or if I upgrade a MB or other hard drive. Man, I would have paid 7 more bucks if I knew it would be like this.


Thanks