installing dell os on a new harddrive

I have a dell desktop with a dell win xp os installed on a dell logo seagate harddrive. i plan on buying a new seagate harddrive at a computer store, but will i be able to install the win xp os cd that came with my dell on the new harddrive?

Yeah. The windows xp cd that comes with your computer is different from any other winxp disk. Dell just prints there name on the disk because they distribute it with their desktop. When you get the new harddrive you will need to reformat it. If you need help with that just ask. Once it's formated, just pop your xp disk in and you're good to go. If you need any other help feel free to ask.

ok, now i also have a dell laptop. its an inspiron 5100. Will the notebook harddrives sold at computer stores be compatible with my laptop?

All laptop hard disks are the same (ATA/100, 2.5"), but the onlt differences is that there are six sizes of thickness: 8.5mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm, 12.7mm, 17.0mm, and 19.0mm. Logicly, your laptop can take a hard disk thats thinner than the hard disk bay, but not one thats thicker. You will also need to get a hard disk caddy or reuse your old one. Unlike desktop hard disks, all laptop hard disks use a single 44-pin connector for interface and power.

There should be a small hole in the tray of your CD or DVD drive. It is an emergency opening hole. If you already know your BIOS is set to look for a CD first, you can save yourself a bit of time by pushing a straightened paperclip into that hole until the drive slides open slightly, pull it the rest of the way open, set the setup disc in the drive and turn on your computer. Sometimes it's better to use the setup disc that comes with the hard drive to set up a new one because it lets you just copy one drive to another. Otherwise, just go with the formatting on the Windows disc.

Originally Posted by pdnielsen

There should be a small hole in the tray of your CD or DVD drive. It is an emergency opening hole. If you already know your BIOS is set to look for a CD first, you can save yourself a bit of time by pushing a straightened paperclip into that hole until the drive slides open slightly, pull it the rest of the way open, set the setup disc in the drive and turn on your computer. Sometimes it's better to use the setup disc that comes with the hard drive to set up a new one because it lets you just copy one drive to another. Otherwise, just go with the formatting on the Windows disc.

Or more safely, just open the drive when there's power to the PC. The only time that the Dell disc will not work in a PC is when the motherboard does not have a Dell manufactured BIOS. So if you were to change hard drives it will work just like normal. But if you changed motherboards or updated your BIOS to a non-Dell BIOS then you would have troubles.

Don't bother with this paperclip idea. There's absolutely no need unless your drive has issues, in which case you should get a new one, but reading your post, I see no mention of troubles. So yeah, just boot with the disc in the drive and you will do just fine. Unless you have troubles with it booting from the disc, then you will need to enter your BIOS (often refered to as Setup, usually accessed by pushing F2 or Del) and changing the boot device order.

There might also be something called multiboot or boot menu when the BIOS screen shows, if you press the key for that, then it will let you select where to boot from.