computer has died

my hard drive has finally had it tick tick tick is all it was doing.

So I've bought a 250gb SATA hard drive (old one was 160gb PATA), questons

- when attaching the drive to the motherboard I have a blue and black connector on the hard drive so I'm assuming I use the black one as the end of the ATA cable is black?

- where can I download XP home edition as I don't have a disc? I have a key on the side of my pc just need the setup disc.... all legal

- do I just plug the hd in on motherboard & power supply on the hd turn the pc on and put in the xp disc?


There will probably be more questions but thanks in advance

oh and it's XP home edition SP2 I need

EDIT: I have xp home sp2 on my laptop im using lol! is there a way to create a disc using my laptop?

I have connected up the HD and in BOIS changed OnChip SATA Controller to Raid Mode

I got a windows XP Home SP2 disc, set it up to boot from cd rom and I get this

for realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.16 (041224)
PXE-E61: Media test failure
PXE-MOF: exiting PXE ROM

reboot and select proper boot device

that has stumped me......

ANOTHER EDIT: I put a windows Pro cd in and it started booting from that.. but I don't have a key for that so I cannot use it so it seems It's the disc I have that's the problem.

Can anyone find me a windows xp home sp2 disc pretty please?

look on all the warez / torrent site and just input your key instead of their filthy stolen one.

I take it your ok with your harddrive now?. The odd coloured one usually just indicates its the primary one you can plug your black sata cable into it no problem .

If your still struggling I'll find you a direct link if you like

I did have a bit of a problem with the HDD in BOIS didn't know weather to choose Native, Raid or Legacy so I chose Native as I think thats the best one?

i got a xp and burnt it to disc but it didn't work do I have to d/l a single ISO file then burn it to disc for it to be bootable?

yep affraid so

plenty of p torrentz on pirate bay, try and find a antiwpa file, its only a couple of kb's it bypasses the need for a product key, or there are ones that when you have loaded windows and the 30 day trial warning appears, load the file job done, no need to activate, but you still get all the updates and you get certified

I was going to suggest one of these copy's but hes got a legit XP Home SP2 key so may aswell stay legit lol.

right I give up lol, d/l what I thought was a ISO file from a torrent but turns out it was a winRAR file which I've extracted and just has the contents of the disc! how do I do it?

Can I crate an ISO file from the files i have then? what program can I use to do this?

power iso v 4.0 or above, if its a load of rar files, or an iso file.

also chris, it is legit, your just getting around the annoying registration, and if you have to install xp endless times like me, coz im forever changing major parts, microsnot only value the registration key a certain number of times

done it next problem lol

It's a SATA HDD in 'Native' mode it cannot reconise the HDD but in raid mode it can, should I be using raid mode because I thought it was for multiple HDD's and i only have one?

when you pugged it in, it should have recognised it itself, try leagacy, thats what it should be

and yeh raid is for multiple hdd's

been having a look at BIOS and it's strange...

In native mode it will reconise my dvd drive as secondry IDE master but not the HDD as primary IDE master

raid mode - DVD drive I see my HDD on startup but it's still not in primary IDE master and my dvd drive is on secondry ide master

legacy mode it will reconise my HDD as primary IDE master but wont reconise my dvd so I can't boot from it!!!! argh!

i thought legacy red but it wont reconise my dvd for some strange reason.... help? lol

you saying its a sata drive, it shouldnt be ide anything

should be one of the sata's

im confuddled

is it a sata drive you got?

there do seem to be compatability issues with sata hdd and ide cd/dvd rom drives

in boot drive priority or something similar in your bios, set your dvd drive as one then your floppy (if you got one) and then the hdd, should see all your drives in bios, even if it doesnt work when loaded.

give it a try and me know