One quick question. How hard is it to pull a hard drive out of a laptop? I built several PC's but never jacked with a laptop....


Thanks,
Jason

Depends on the laptop. In many cases opening it will void your warranty, so you need to keep that in mind. Beyond that, it should be a fairly simple procedure on most laptops.

Thanks Budfred.. The laptop is an old one (Dell P2).

Well then you probably don't need to worry about the warranty....:D

You should be able to get it out pretty easily, replacing it could be a bit more difficult given that it is a Dell. If you don't need to replace it, then it should be no biggie....

Well here is the problem.. I can not get past the password screen in Windows 2000. My friend has no recovery software and there is no Floppy drive in which I can boot to DOS to nuke the files so I can reset the password files. I've tried to boot Windows XP from the CD Rom but for some reason I keep getting an error message saying something to the effect of "unable to read the CD".

So what I am going to try and do is pull the hard drive out slap it into my system,format it,install Windows XP, and then place it back into the laptop then bingo problem solved..... I hope:rolleyes:

What do you think? Does it sound crazy or do you think it could work??


Thanks...........
Jason

If it has a USB port I would look for an external floppy drive and see if you can use a boot disk with that. The laptop's hard drive is going to be no more than a 2.5 inch format which means you will need to do some extra work to install it in a desktop. Most laptop (recently anyway) come with the option of booting with a USB drive, so you may be able to get in that way. Since you are not worried about the data on the hard drive anyway, if you can boot into DOS, you can reformat and so forth there. Since you have access to the BIOS, you can set the USB to boot there if needed.

Originally posted by Jason1971
So what I am going to try and do is pull the hard drive out slap it into my system,format it,install Windows XP, and then place it back into the laptop then bingo problem solved..... I hope:rolleyes:

What do you think? Does it sound crazy or do you think it could work??

My vote is for "crazy". :)

Windows XP will then be configured for your desktop. Your laptop will have an entirely different collection of hardware and on first boot XP is likely to go berserk.

If USB isn't an option then it can still be done, with a little drive-swapping in your desktop.

Basically, I'd do this:

- In your desktop, format the laptop drive and install DOS boot files so the disk is bootable;
- Copy the XP installation CD to a folder on the drive.
- Put the drive back in the laptop, boot to DOS and run the XP setup.

It may not be that simple in reality, but it should be do-able.

Windows XP will then be configured for your desktop. Your laptop will have an entirely different collection of hardware and on first boot XP is likely to go berserk.

Well that was my first thought but then I started thinking that XP will just reconfigure itself. Just like doing a major upgrade on your computer without having to reinstalling XP.


Well I am off work for the next four days so I will give your suggestions a try when I go back to work.

Thanks again....

Jason