Dell D620 drive swap

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Like many here, I have a password issue, but it's not with the bios. The organization my wife works for bartered for her to keep her laptop when she resigned in exchange for some ongoing side-work. Unfortunately the tech at the outfit is upset 'cuz he wanted that laptop for himself and has no intention of giving her administrator priviledge so we can disjoin it from the domain and install our home printers. (He answers to a different boss than the one who had the authority to give my wife ownership to the laptop, long story. If we fight it he'll find a way to "help" her by swapping the D620 for some relic from the junk pile). The machine works fine, but we can't install printers or do various other things due to lack of user admin priviledges for her user account.

I can hit F12 to boot from CD-rom, but can't do a new install from cd because i get a pci.sys bluesceen which I'm assuming is happening because of the hdd having password protection on it. Question is, if I buy my wife a new sata drive (the D620 is sata) will it work fine without further problems installing windows?

I've already checked dell.com to be sure I can download all the required drivers, that all seems ok.

Thanks, Bob
 
Sure it will work. There is no reason why it wouldn't. As long as you have a fresh, formatted hard drive, there shouldn't be any problems.
 
dopefisher said:
Sure it will work. There is no reason why it wouldn't. As long as you have a fresh, formatted hard drive, there shouldn't be any problems.

Well, I got a new hard drive today, and when I try to install windows XP I get through all the standard pre-copy process, but when it gets to the "Starting Windows XP" part of the initial install, I get a blue screen Stop: ox0000007E error pointing to pci.sys as before.

Help?
 
1. try removing the cmos battery for 30 seconds to load the default bios setup values, then try reinstallling win xp again. 2. also, is this a sata 2 drive? if so, your motherboard might require you to have the sata 2 drivers on a floppy disk before you can install windows. 3. is this the only hard drive in your system at the moment?
 
Ok, found the answer to my problem

It wasn't anything to do with the system locking out fresh installs, it was an incompatibility of XP sp0 with some of the hardare on the D620. I used Paul Thurrott's site's article on slipstreaming install of XP Sp0 with SP2 and it's installing fine now on the original hard drive. Looks like I can return the new drive for refund.

Bob
 
dopefisher said:
1. try removing the cmos battery for 30 seconds to load the default bios setup values, then try reinstallling win xp again. 2. also, is this a sata 2 drive? if so, your motherboard might require you to have the sata 2 drivers on a floppy disk before you can install windows. 3. is this the only hard drive in your system at the moment?

Thanx for your help, looks like you're were on the right track with item 2 above...

Bob
 
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