Quite a predicament
Hey everyone,
I have a few problems and really hope you all can help. First things first, a little about my laptop:
-Dell Inspiron 600m (already hit the Bluetooth palm rest problem)
-Pentium M 1.8GHz.
-1GB ram (512x2)
-ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (problem #1)
-New Hard drive: Western Digital 80GB 5400rpm
-Old Hard drive: Toshiba 80GB 5400rpm.
1) I posted a few days ago about the whole system32 business and I've now I have another problem. I put my old hard drive into an external enclosure and, thankfully enough, all of my data is intact ($40 for an enclosure from Best Buy was a much better option than having Geeksquad back up all of my stuff for $200). I also bought a new hard drive and installed XP Pro onto it. Everything went pretty smoothly, but I do have a few problems. Fortunately I have wireless access, so that helps a bit. My problem is that my video card (Mobility Radeon 9000), my integrated audio card, ethernet port, and probably a whole host of other devices aren't being detected. I tried having windows automatically detect and try to install these components but that didn't work. I also don't have any of the CDs (I don't even remember getting CD's for these devices). All of the screen scrolling just moves unbearably slow now.
Is there a way to copy the drivers from the old hard drive to the new one I just installed? And if so, where would I find the drivers in the old hard drive, where would I put them in the new hard drive, and how could I get Windows to detect and install them?
2) Oh and a little update about the old hard drive. As I said, everything is intact, but if try to use the old drive, it still won't get to the desktop. I tried just about everything (chkdsk /p, repairing from another XP Pro Disk, and the install process that detects the previous installs). I can go through every folder on my old drive and I was wondering if I could just replace the current files like: sam, system, security, etc. with the ones I found in the "repair" subfolder in the Windows folder. I hope it was okay to do that . . . because I already did. And now it just restarts itself after getting to the "windows setup continuation" screen. But I did save the "corrupt" files. Is there any way to save my XP installation in my old Hard drive (Yes I did scan through that super long thread about the system32 problem. In fact, I even posted in it).
If I could get the old hard drive to get into XP again, that would be awesome . . . I could possibly just clone it onto the new one.
***** I just saw the "files and settings transfer" option in the start menu. If I use that, what will that copy and what will that leave out (in terms of programs and files and whatnot?
I really appreciate any insight you can give me.
-Justin
I have a few problems and really hope you all can help. First things first, a little about my laptop:
-Dell Inspiron 600m (already hit the Bluetooth palm rest problem)
-Pentium M 1.8GHz.
-1GB ram (512x2)
-ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (problem #1)
-New Hard drive: Western Digital 80GB 5400rpm
-Old Hard drive: Toshiba 80GB 5400rpm.
1) I posted a few days ago about the whole system32 business and I've now I have another problem. I put my old hard drive into an external enclosure and, thankfully enough, all of my data is intact ($40 for an enclosure from Best Buy was a much better option than having Geeksquad back up all of my stuff for $200). I also bought a new hard drive and installed XP Pro onto it. Everything went pretty smoothly, but I do have a few problems. Fortunately I have wireless access, so that helps a bit. My problem is that my video card (Mobility Radeon 9000), my integrated audio card, ethernet port, and probably a whole host of other devices aren't being detected. I tried having windows automatically detect and try to install these components but that didn't work. I also don't have any of the CDs (I don't even remember getting CD's for these devices). All of the screen scrolling just moves unbearably slow now.
Is there a way to copy the drivers from the old hard drive to the new one I just installed? And if so, where would I find the drivers in the old hard drive, where would I put them in the new hard drive, and how could I get Windows to detect and install them?
2) Oh and a little update about the old hard drive. As I said, everything is intact, but if try to use the old drive, it still won't get to the desktop. I tried just about everything (chkdsk /p, repairing from another XP Pro Disk, and the install process that detects the previous installs). I can go through every folder on my old drive and I was wondering if I could just replace the current files like: sam, system, security, etc. with the ones I found in the "repair" subfolder in the Windows folder. I hope it was okay to do that . . . because I already did. And now it just restarts itself after getting to the "windows setup continuation" screen. But I did save the "corrupt" files. Is there any way to save my XP installation in my old Hard drive (Yes I did scan through that super long thread about the system32 problem. In fact, I even posted in it).
If I could get the old hard drive to get into XP again, that would be awesome . . . I could possibly just clone it onto the new one.
***** I just saw the "files and settings transfer" option in the start menu. If I use that, what will that copy and what will that leave out (in terms of programs and files and whatnot?
I really appreciate any insight you can give me.
-Justin
0
Comments
Dell ships all computers with a recovery / utilities CD (or 2) that you should be able to pop in to get all your drivers from.
If you can't find that... video driver
browse for the rest
Glad you got that sorted out without getting ripped off
Drivers often get placed in bits and pieces in various places in the Windows folder and its subfolders. Trying to track them down manually would be a terrible job to undertake.
Go to Dell's site and do a search for your laptop by model number. If there is a long Dell number on the unit somewhere you should try that, too. You should then be able to locate a download page where you can get everything you need.
EDIT: Keebler beat me to it.
The service tag worked like a charm. Do you think there's any hope for my old hard drive ever running XP normally and having all of my apps and files running smoothly??? (I'm probably just going to re-install them but I'm just curious)
Thank you so much
To do a Repair Install:
1) Make sure the BIOS is set so your cdrom drive is the first boot device.
2) Put your WinXP CD in the drive, start the computer, then watch for a line like "Press any key to boot from CD".
3) Continue as if it were a clean install, until it gets to the point where it finds your existing Windows installation.
4) Pick the option to repair the current Windows installation, not add another one.
5) The rest is automatic.
Actually, I already did that whole process and it finally showed the Windows XP loading screen (the one with the blue bar that scrolls from left to right). Then it displayed another screen (aqua in color) and it said some sort of error message . . . something about an incorrect (something) being passed. Then I close that and it restarts.
Yeah . . . that's probably what's going to happen for me. Re-installing everything is going suck . . . but at least I didn't loose any information. And when I do re-install the programs, I can just pretty much drag and drop my old files into the new HD and they should work fine . . . right?
Thanks again
One thing you might try is to use the spare drive to make an image of the one in the computer once you get things set up the way you like them. That way if disaster strikes again you just copy the whole shebang back and keep on going.
How do I go about doing that?
If you needed to reformat again, you could then get a jump start on the process by just "imaging" from that image you saved and then moving your backed up data onto it. Kinda like a pre-fabricated house
If this sounds like something you'd like to do, let us know and we can give you some more guidance with it. Personally, I think it's too much trouble for my purposes. I redo my system once a year regardless (for better performance), but by then there are new versions of all the software I use, so I'd just have to upgrade everything anyway, ya know? It'd just more tech hoops for you to jump through right now and would probably have a modest payoff in the future if any.