XP won't load on new HD

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Hi, all

I installed a new HD, and loaded the Dell XP Home OS (ver 1) from the recovery disk. Sadly, this was not a full OS disk & XP only worked in skeleton mode.

I thought I'd delete the install in preparation of installing XP Pro 2morrow, and at the same time, divide the HD into 2 partitions.

When I 'divided' the HD into partitions (using XP Home), the Blue screen responded with "Your computer's start up program cannot gain access to the disk containing the partition or free space you chose. Setup cannot install Windows XP on this hard disk. ...

So, I went to C: and formated C:.

Still the same result occurs.

Can anyone advise how I can resolve this issue?
 
why bother?

If you are planning to install XP Pro tomorrow i assume you are doing a clean fresh install? So during the install just use the xp pro install disk and when asked reformat the entire drive to start clean and fresh. Repartition it under XP PRo
 
Thanks, I hope, but...

Thanks for that.

I'd assumed that if I can't get XP Home to reload, then the same for XP Pro.

Since posting, I was looking around and some posts were saying that Dell won't allow a new hardware to be inserted as the BIOS involves #xx data specific to the hardware.

Having read that, I thought that I'm in trouble... But, then I thought "If I was able to load XP Home - even partially - the HD obviously works, maybe it was something in the partition dividing that mucked me up.

Your thoughts?
 
Am only guessing but you might have misinterpreted post you referred to (or the post was wrong)

Some types of hardware / types of changes may require you to modify a BIOS setting (which is also no big deal) but swapping two internal hard drives on your Dell wouldn't require any settings change.

btw.. people change their hard drives all the time (that includes me and my Dell )
 
Thanks, and...

Thanks for that.

I'm now thinking that everything will go alright when I use XP Pro.

Can't see why BIOS needs altering.

Perhaps the worst part of it - and 'it' refers to IT generally - is that there are more 'problems' in our conception of the issues than the issues themselves. And, as they say 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' (meaning, my partial knowledge tends to generate fear more than complacency).

If XP Pro has 'probs', I will revisit the Forum.

Cheers
 
May have to track down some drivers because Dell does have some Dell only proprietary things on their machines. Run into that problem with them before.
Should have no problem other than that for a clean install.
 
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