Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (
More info?)
I do not believe that Dell has written 'exclusion' parameters into their BIOS
that would prevent certain products from being recognised.
Therefore an IDE or SATA drive, being fully compliant with the industry
specifications for that product type should be 100% compatible.
Thus you shouldn't have any technical issues with the use of a non-original
hard drive: after all Dell buys them from the likes of Hitachi or Seagate or
Maxtor.
It may be that in the creation of their System recovery Disk Set, that Dell
have generated the image and engineered checks that would prevent a user from
upgrading the hard drive in such a manner as to void the terms of their OEM
licencence agreement terms with Microsoft.
In this case you may find that it does indeed recognise the disk, and would
specifically seek hard drive identification information, however if it wasn't
within certain parameters, then the user could not continue performing a
System rebuild using the Dell media. It would of course be no problem using
a Retail version of XP to rebuild the pC.
"robert t" wrote:
> Does anyone know if you can install a new non-Dell HD in their desktop
> computers with no non-recognition problems?
>