Replacing Hard Drive (quick question)

[Murr]

Ok my first hard drive broke, so I bought a new one and slapped it in there. How do I get windows on it? I was assuming I would just put the disc in but it says it cant detect bios. I had it boot from floppy last time, so maybe I gotta put the old drive back in, go to bios, boot from cd, then put the new one back in?

Thanks in advance.:gift:

BTW, I'm going to class right now, so if theres anything you need to know in addition, I wont be able to answer for a couple hours.

 

[t0mmyb0y]

Originally posted by: Murr
Ok my first hard drive broke, so I bought a new one and slapped it in there. How do I get windows on it? I was assuming I would just put the disc in but it says it cant detect bios. I had it boot from floppy last time, so maybe I gotta put the old drive back in, go to bios, boot from cd, then put the new one back in?

Thanks in advance.:gift:

BTW, I'm going to class right now, so if theres anything you need to know in addition, I wont be able to answer for a couple hours.

There should be a setting in your BIOS to set the boot order of your devices. Set your CD-ROM as the first one to allow you to boot from the Windows 2K/XP CD. To get to your BIOS you generally hit DEL while the computer is detecting RAM. You will probably have to hit any key when the CD-ROM is detected in order to boot from it. YW.

 

[Redviffer]

There are also a lot of different ways to get into the bios, some require an F2 or any other combination. If you can't get into the bios to change your boot up settings or your bios doesn't support booting off a CD (unlikely unless it's really old), you can obtain WinXP boot up discs: here.

I did some minor checking on microsofts site and didn't see anything for windows 2000, but I'm sure there is something out there. Good luck and let us know if this worked out for you. BTW, the above program will basically decompress itself over 6 floppy discs, kind of a PITA, you would find it much easier to boot up off the CD if you can.

 

[Murr]

Yeesh...running into trouble.

After the Dell logo pops up, it does this searching thing, and then says BIOS ver. (something) is not installed. I can get into setup and change the boot order though.

I have a Windows XP Prof disc and a Windows 98 for computers without an OS disc.

If I try to boot directly from the XP Prof disc, it starts setting up, then says:
File viaide.sys caused an unexpected error(256) at line 5882 in d:\xpclient\base\boot\setup\setup.c

So then I tried the floppy thing. I install all 6, pop in the XP cd, everything seems ok, but then when it says hit enter to install XP, I get blue screen of death.

When I try booting to Win98 disc, right away it says I/O error. Replace and hit any key.

I know the hard drive is installed correctly because I ran a Maxtor program that said it was ok, but that there was no BIOS installed.

Sigh....please help

 

[Murr]

Should i try Win98 boot discs?

 

[HalfCrazy]

Maybe the link below will help you. It's a link to a web page on dells support page.

How do I enter the BIOS, CMOS, Setup, or System Setup on my Dell? computer?