Dell 4550 won't boot to new hard drive

[0192]

i have a dell deminsion 4550 i was given. it has a pentium 4 2. 4GHZ sounded like a good machine. nut it's not i wanted to put in a newer hard drive with xp pro just like the original and it won't boot. the original was 30GB the new is 40 (40 the max for the machine?) the origanal is from 2002 the new from 2005 both maxtor diamond max 3.5 series. there online support for sayed it wont work. i know i tried but this is wired becuse almost any other computer you can put in a hard drive and it will boot. any ideas of how to make this work. thanks

 

[badge]

A new hard drive must be formatted and have an operating system installed before it can 'boot'. In BIOS, set the first boot device to CD/DVD and format and load the OS with the XP installation disk. Google how to load windows XP on a new hard drive.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/help/install-reinstall-uninstall

 

[0192]

A new hard drive must be formatted and have an operating system installed before it can 'boot'. In BIOS, set the first boot device to CD/DVD and format and load the OS with the XP installation disk. Google how to load windows XP on a new hard drive.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/help/install-reinstall-uninstall

this new hard drive has an os it is windows xp pro just like the dell origanal. the new one from another computer is 40GB and dell suport site said that was as big as it would accept. it should still work. this one also has all my programs and documents on it.

 

[badge]

this new hard drive has an os

You can not expect a hard drive loaded from another system to boot up on your system. A repair installation of Windows XP on the new drive may work. A reformat and fesh installation of windows on the new drive along with the new systems chipset/system drivers would be the better choice.

 

[0192]

this new hard drive has an os

You can not expect a hard drive loaded from another system to boot up on your system. A repair installation of Windows XP on the new drive may work. A reformat and fesh installation of windows on the new drive along with the new systems chipset/system drivers would be the better choice.

the dell suport on there site said only another one from them will work and before that thay said windows is bad and needs to be reinstaled. does this mean that it wont run ubuntu an a hard drive eather. i tryed to put ubuntu on a diferent hard disk it would not find it till i put the ubuntu cd in and it tryed to install failed now it won't do anything. is there a way to reset somthing it the motherboard to recognize a non dell HDD. or is there somthing like a driver or partition type thing i can copy or get somwhere to do this.
this new hard drive i want to put in will work as a slave to the origainal but is there a way to make them both act like masters (eg original for os and dell stuff the new one for fy programs and documents?
also this dell will not recognize a thumb drive and it has xp pro i plug it in the drive lights up then dies i get a mesage that says it is incompatable with windows any ideas how to fix this

thanks

 

[aford10]

The hard drive should work just fine. Dell is feeding you a line to try and sell you a drive.

Some Dells have an OS install mode in the BIOS, that needs to be enabled. You'll want to look for that.

You need to do as badge says, and do a repair or fresh install to get the new drive booting.

 

[0192]

The hard drive should work just fine. Dell is feeding you a line to try and sell you a drive.

Some Dells have an OS install mode in the BIOS, that needs to be enabled. You'll want to look for that.

You need to do as badge says, and do a repair or fresh install to get the new drive booting.

can i just do like a restore to get that because i don't have the original xp disk i bought it from someone it was already on it. and my computer is mising the coa or it is too old this is a computer that says it was desinged for me so if ther was it would be wrong. thats why i wanted to get this dell working the me one is only a 800mhz procesor with 725 mb of ram. the dell is a pentium 4 2.40 ghz has 512 of ram. thats why i wanted to use that. and i have tryed this new hard drive the bios says the size but when trying to boot and a white dot flashes in the upper left corner of the screen i have left it a few miniutes and nothing else hapened. do you have any ideas about the thumb drive not working. i mentioned before.

 

[aford10]

You can't do a restore without the original discs, or a recovery partition. Either way, you're likely going to need a valid COA. You may need to purchase a valid copy of windows.

What was the reason for removing the original hard drive? If the original drive still boots, it's probably best to keep using that.

 

[0192]

You can't do a restore without the original discs, or a recovery partition. Either way, you're likely going to need a valid COA. You may need to purchase a valid copy of windows.

What was the reason for removing the original hard drive? If the original drive still boots, it's probably best to keep using that.

i tryed the original because it has all of my programs and documents on it and it is 10 gigs bigger.
it will work as a slave but then all my programs and documents are an a difrent drive. is there a way to like use both like this the original for the os and dell programs then make my documents and my desktop with all my programs from the other one. (like 2 master disks)
my computer i am using now shuts down wrong it shuts down windows but the fans and psu keep going till i push and hod the button like hard shut down. i changed the psu and still happens. any ideas whay it would do this.

 

[aford10]

If you use both drives, you can have one for the boot drive, and use the 2nd for your programs and documents. That shouldn't be a problem. It requires some manual settings changes.

Check the event viewer on your main drive for system and/or application errors. There may be something erroring out when you try to shut down. If that's the case, once you fix the error, it should shut down just fine.

Download ccleaner, and use the registry tool to scan and fix any registry errors. You may need to run it a few times to clean up everything.
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

 

[0192]

i know how to make both work but is there a way to combinthem and get that.
how do i get the event viewer and i have also been getting mesages about a paging file that is too small i do what it says to fix it and it does it again i have tryed custom and system managed setings nether work i have also got low or out of vurtual memory mesages any idea how to fix these.

 

[aford10]

I think you need to do some complete system cleanup on that drive. Use ccleaner to clean up the application and system garbage files, as well as using the registry tool.

How much RAM is in that system?

Combine the drives? You mean, like in a RAID array?

 

[0192]

it has 768 mb of ram. i am not sure what a raid ary is. i want to put them as slave&master then combine the staff thats on them so that my documents would be in the my documents like if it had 1 from the slave and the os from the master is this posible.

 

[aford10]

Once you add the 2nd drive to your working system, and assign it a drive letter, it is a slave drive.

 

[0192]

i know but can a slave act partialy like the master for just documents eg change my documents from C: to F: like that

 

[Saga Lout]

i know but can a slave act partialy like the master for just documents eg change my documents from C: to F: like that

A Master/Slave relationship between two hard disks will do that and a lot more, with far fewer risks than a RAID array. You can install new programmes into a Program Files folder you create on the slave and even move the swap file - pagefile.sys - to speed things up and release space on the main C:\ drive which will hold your Windows system. The only thing you have to be careful with is the jumpering of the disks and for that, you're probably better off making sure both are set to cable select then put the slave on the midway plug of the ribbon cable. If you do use the Master and Slave jumpers and either disk is a Western Digital, pay particular attention to the instructions. Master with Slave present is a different setup from Master without.

 

[0192]

ok thanks that helps but is there a way to redirect the my documents on the start menu to this slave disk instead of them being on the master. these are both maxtor 3.5 series drives. the slave a 40 GB the master a 30 GB. will this make any problems (so far i have not seen any) because the max dell says the board will support is 40GB?

 

[0192]

is there a way to redirect my documents to the slave drive?

 

[aford10]

If you right click on my documents-->properties-->you can change the target location to your backup drive. You may need to manually create a 'my documents' folder there.

I haven't tried this, so I'm not sure, but you may also need to adjust a registry setting as well.

 

[Saga Lout]

If you right click on my documents-->properties-->you can change the target location to your backup drive. You may need to manually create a 'my documents' folder there.

I haven't tried this, so I'm not sure, but you may also need to adjust a registry setting as well.

That certainly does the basics but there's a couple more things to do as this old KB describes.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310147

 

[aford10]

From that KB, it seems, all you need to do, is change the target location.

 

[Saga Lout]

From that KB, it seems, all you need to do, is change the target location.

Spot on, now I've read it properly. The other items point only to restoring or hiding it. It won't move it as such, just create a new one named the same or of your own choosing unless I'm reading it wrong. I suppose the acid test is in Documents and Settings{username}My Documents>Properties and check the target.

 

[0192]

does any one know how you can share favorites on a network. i have it right now that every time the favorites folder to be shared. every change it needs to be copyed into a shared documents in my computer making copys of them all.is there a way to just do this like real time without this extra stuff.and not dooing all but only the 1 you want?

 

[0192]

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