toshiba mkgas hard drive into a dell latitude pentium 3 laptop PLEASE HELP!!!

[knicks]

well long story short my laptop hard drive failed and stopped working so i replaced it witht he same model but since the last one would never boot now this new one is obviosuly not mine and it has windows xp home edition on it and i see that load screen but then all i see is llike the screen where it scans your hard drive like as if you shut it down the wrong way. this screen blinks and then my laptop restarts. i am very upset as i just bought this hard drive thinkin it would load instantly.

how can i reformat or fix my new harddrive when i cant even get to the windows my main desktop

mind you my cd drive is weird and does not seem to boot right or something i even went into the bios to chage the boot order and still no avail

i really need you all to help as this is for my son until i can save up and get him a newer model.

dell latitude cpx pentium 3 512 mb of ram side loading harddrive with caddy.

another thing sicne i guess this harddrive was housed with another pc now i also sometimes get a memory error saying this pc has changed level of memory. basically this is because it is in my laptop but it has the data from where it came from. i know this hard drive is functioning but how can i get it to just plain work
regards

[saphalline]

You can't just slap in a hard drive from another computer and expect it to work. Windows absolutely does not like this! When Windows is installed onto a system, it loads specific drivers for that hardware. Moving the hard drive to a different machine is like moving your brain to a different body! Nothing works right!

You must reinstall Windows, preferably with the original Dell CD's that came with the laptop. If the CD drive isn't working properly, then you'll need a new one. A laptop that old won't boot off an external CD drive. Basically, as of this moment, you're SOL. Get a new CD drive, or get a new laptop.

[knicks]

i have a similar thread in har ddrive section but this problem is suited for this section as well. is there a way to bypass windows so i can at least format my hard drive. it wont load past the windows xp animation screen and then it restarts, i thought about using a windows cd bt for some reason this laptop cd/dvd drive does not seem right. i even changed the boot order in the bios and it still did not boot.

this is for my son until i can get a better one for him so please help

its a toshiba mkgas hard drive that goes into the side of my laptop via the caddy. it is the same model as the last hard drive i used in this laptop so i kno its capable of workign and my orignal hard drive came from an inspiron so my question is how did my firend format it and make it work for my laptop

i thougght of an external enclosure but i really did not feel like doing that if there is an easier or free way
please help
regards

[Budfred]

I merged the threads because they are about the same issue... You don't need to start 2 threads about the same issue even if they could fit in more than one forum...

[knicks]

o sorry. i apologize im glad people look at other sections a friend of mine said that many people on here focus on the network sections and the windows sections so is there an alternative do wat saphalline said

is it possible to use a hard drive enclusre then, erase the hard drive, reofrmat it from there and then put it into my laptop?

[mjc]

You'll have to enter the BIOS setup and set the boot order to boot off the CD first...then you can use the Windows CD to format, partition and install.

[Paul Komski]

o sorry. so is there an alternative do wat saphalline said
In principle no. You need to either repair the pre-existing OS or reinstall a new one and to do that you are going to need to be able to boot to a CD (or very occasionally with notebooks to a set of floppies). F12 commonly gives one a list of boot devices as a menu in Dell PCs and that avoids actually entering the BIOS setup. Which specific model is your one. If the RAM has changed then the BIOS might give you messages rather than the OS for the other PC.

[knicks]

i see but my cd drive is spinning yet it doesnt seem to do anything weird because it plays dvd's it says cdrom and dvd rom on it

[knicks]

i said in the other thread i guess it got lost in merging

its a pentium 3 dell latitude cpx 2001 is the year.

this is very frustrating as my friend took my hard drive from my inspiron laptop and threw it in the latitude that i am referring to now and it worked it only recently died.

so an enclosure will not work with reformatting it on my desktop pc via the enclosure and then putting it back into the laptop?

[Paul Komski]

You can use the enclosure to format and even make a small bootable dos partition from another PC but you wont be able to boot to the drive in the enclosure.

You could even create a FAT partition on the drive and sys it to make it bootable. Copy the i386 folder from the installation CD to that partition and then run i386/winnt after booting to the minimalist dos partition with the HDD inside the laptop.

Some hints at http://www.iol.ie/~krakowangus/winnt.htm but note that you must first make the partition bootable in this case unless you have a way of booting to DOS on a floppy or CD.

[knicks]

how can i acess this dos way and the folder if i cannot get past the windows animation screen?

edit
i feel stupid for buying this harddrive from ebay now i could have saved the money i thought it would work instantly the same way the sam hard drive model worked before from my inspiron into my latitude

[Paul Komski]

how can i acess this dos way and the folder if i cannot get past the windows animation screen?
You will have to reformat or at least create a new primary FAT partition in the hard drive while it is attached to another PC. That PC will need to be running Win98 or you will need to be able to access the drive from DOS running on a floppy (not easy if the HDD is attached via USB but simple if you have an ide to 2.5" converter). You would then format the partition and sys it using sys.com or possibly just format X: /s where X: is the drive letter of the relevant partition.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

how can i acess this dos way and the folder if i cannot get past the windows animation screen?

You DON'T get anywhere trying to boot to Windows when you are about to reinstall an operating system.

You NEED a Windows disk. Otherwise you won't get far repairing or reinstalling without one. The further this thread goes, the more it seems you are trying to side-step this issue.

Merely buying a hard drive with XP on it from eBay is NOT going to do you any good. It will need to be formatted ie 'wiped' (or via repair install) and an operating system installed (or repaired). Either way, you need a cd with the XP os on it. Home, Pro, 2003, whatever.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it seems the others here are waiting to here you ask what, or how to do whatever, with your 'disk' which I don't think you have.

And why are you using the CD-ROM bay with this laptop, isn't there an internal hard drive?

loading harddrive with caddy.

Toshiba calls this a 'Select Bay' It can also house a floppy drive, cd burner, additional battery, etc but it is not the primary location of the internal hard drive. Is there an internal drive in this Notebook? Do you have either recovery cd's or a copy of XP?

[knicks]

lol fruss tray u have mistaken my comments for incorrect statements. sorry if i was not clear i actually own a legitamate copy of windows xp media center edition and aslo a license for windows xp pro

my problem is i just bought a hard drive for my dell latitude pentium 3 512 mb ram latop and no there is not an internal hard drive. it loads from the left side of the laptop and is housed by a caddy. my problem is my cd drive is not reading the windows cdrom for some reasona nd the hard drive i got apparantly does the pci files are corrupted like it keeps telling me.
so how can i wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows when i cannot even get past the boot screen where it says windows did not start up successfully.


my friend mentioned this wat do you all think of it being that i have two parallel ports, 1 serial port, and 1 usb port on my laptop
"Parallel - Parallel port CD-ROM drives come with special drivers to help communicate through a PC system's parallel port. The transfer rate tends to be slower than other interfacing methods. Biggest advantage is the portability between systems including notebooks"

thanks in advance for the help keep it coming

[Paul Komski]

Until you grasp the concept that attaching a device and being able to boot from it are different things you are going nowhere and I very much doubt if you will be able to lay your hands on a parallel port CDROM let alone boot from it.

You wont be able to boot to an external hard drive on your system and you probably wont be able to boot to an external floppy or CD on it either.

As FTT has stressed, you must be able to boot to something to install or repair.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Turn computer on so you can put one of the Windows cd's in preferably XPpro. Then:

Starting the Dell Diagnostics

Perform the following steps to start the diagnostics:

1. Turn off the computer.

2. Undock the computer if you have it docked.

3. Turn on the computer.

4. Press <F2> at the Dell BIOS splash screen to access the System Setup menu.

5. Select the following boot sequence:

* Boot First Device: Diskette Drive

* Boot Second Device: CDROM / DVDROM Drive

* Boot Third Device: Internal HDD


Rebboot. You may be prompted to press a key or move a highlight with the arrow keys to boot from CDROM. This is what we want.

Can you get to here?