I know this thread is for building PC's but I am at a loose end through mere stupidity and frustration!!
Basically 5 months ago my laptop burnt out and my hard drive was at a loss and some tach head said there was nothing he could do ( he was an absolute ass who didn't wanna help ) so he kept the hard drive cuz I said I no longer needed it and after a while I bought a new sata hard drive to go in my laptop and have the installation CD for XP!
Now my problem is obviously all my drivers and such are on the old hard drive ( I found this out trawling the internet recently )
And my question is what can I do and how can I install and configure this new hard drive?
what do you mean configure the hdd it has nothing to do with the OS or hardware drivers,if you have exclamation marks next to components in device manager,the drivers can be got from the laptops manufacturers website.
Originally posted by scorpNZ: what do you mean configure the hdd it has nothing to do with the OS or hardware drivers,if you have exclamation marks next to components in device manager,the drivers can be got from the laptops manufacturers website.
Fair do but the thing is with putting a new hard drive in I cannot access the actual windows itself, it jst brings up the blue screen saying that I should remove any new hard drives and configure them, saying windows has been stopped. I dunno what to do, if there is a way to access a COMMAND input for me to set the hard drive up, but I have literally no idea what to with this!
It seems to me that there's a misconception here as to what hard drives actually do. Quite literally the hard drive is where EVERYTHING is stored. Your documents, games, programs, pictures, settings, bookmarks, everything, even Windows is gone. Absolutely gone. There is no "Windows" to boot into. The hard drive is literally bare and empty.
You actually need a disc copy of Windows and you need to find out how to boot from your CD drive(usually an option in the BIOS, google is your friend). You then must re-install EVERYTHING from scratch, including drivers, games and any other programs you might use.
A new Hard drive installation typically goes like this:
1. Physically install the drive(which you seem to have done)
2. Place a valid Windows CD into the drive and boot into the CD. You can most likely access your boot menu by repeatedly tapping F2 or F12 as the PC is booting. This should bring you to a menu where you can choose what you want to boot from. Choose the option that most closely resembles what you want to do(for you, would probably choose "Boot from CD-ROM" or "DVD-RW") If you don't see an option that looks anything like a CD drive, you probably booted into the wrong menu.
3. Once within the windows CD, choose to format your hard drive in "NTFS" following any prompts Windows gives you.
4. Follow the setup procedure for Windows, be patient, it takes quite a while.
5. After everything is installed you will be able to reboot into windows. If using Windows 7 some of your drivers will be pre-loaded for basic functionality but it won't really run properly until everything is updated.
6. Install the drivers. Drivers are the piece of software that tell your hardware what to do. ie tells the soundcard to make sound, tells the video chip to put things on the screen etc. Most important drivers to install would be graphics, sound, and any network or wireless cards. These can usually be found on the manufacturers website by looking up the specific model of your laptop.
7. Install any other software. Basically after drivers you are home free. Now all you need to do is find all your favorite stuff and reinstall it. A good first thing to go for would be a good free antivirus. I personally prefer Comodo Anti-Virus.
Any further than that I really can't help you man. It's hard to tell what's happening unless you're right there doing it. Would be glad to walk you through a few steps though if you really need help.
