Ok, My current HD is too slow, loud and small. I currently have a 40 GIG HD
5200RPM. I bought a 160 GIG 7200RPM; bigger and faster. However, when I
bought my pc, it only came w/ a RECOVERY CD and not the actual XP Cd. I do
however have a Serial that is on my case. My question is, how can I put Xp on
my other pc? This old HD will be recycled after I format it first of course,
so its not like this copy of XP will be on mulitply computers, just the new
one.
Can I boot from the cd and install it that way?
Help please & Thanks
Depends on what your particular Recovery CD can and can't do. They vary
from one manufacturer to the next. At times they vary from model to model
by the same manufacturer. There's two possible scenarios: You have a
generic OEM setup CD (will actually run the XP setup process) or the CD
contains a specialized recovery program that restores a factory image.
If the CD will run XP's setup, then you can use it for preparing the hard
drive and for installing XP. For reference:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
If running your recovery CD will not create a partition, format the
partition and mark it as active - then you need to find alternative tools
to prepare the drive before running the recovery CD. Usually a new hard
drive comes with a CD that contains tools to perform these functions.
Once the disk is prepared, give the Recovery CD a try following the
manufacturer's directions.
There still remains the possibility that the recovery CD will only restore
to a certain size hard drive. If you run into this obstacle try creating
two partitions: one 40 GB and a second partition using the remaining disk
space. Run the Recovery CD again. It *should* work with the 40GB partition
and run whatever restore routine it uses.
If, however, the recovery CD insists on that first drive being 40 GB and no
larger (rare but have seen it happen), then you may need to consider buying
a retail CD that is untethered by the restrictions contained in your
recovery CD. Again this is rare. Chances are good that you'll get XP
restored on the new drive and won't have to face this predicament.
