Hi all, My computor crashed about a week ago, since that time I have been on the phone with my brother in Ca who built the system. I bought a new 320 gig hard drive, but I cannot get the window xp home operating system to load onto the hard drive. I took out one stick of memory and that seemed to help at first, but now after it says the installation was successful and it reboots then it says I'm trying to partition a drive that already has an operating system on it. It's just going through the same motions over and over again. Any thoughts would be Greatly appreciated.

Are both drives in the computer, the new and the old?

this may help you Clean format and install of WinXp It's hard to do a good job When you have a monkey on your back

Wow that was quick!! I had 2 120 gig hard drives in it, one had windows xp home the other was just for working on video editing stuff. That one is still in the computor,however it is unhooked at the present time,(thinking that possibly there was a virus that may have already affected the new hard drive.) I took out the one that crashed when I put the new one in. I have tried to load the operating system on it several times. At first it came up saying setupdll.dll was not copied correctly. Then my brother suggested removing one memory stick at a time and checking them.Well, when I pulled the first one out it went further through the set up, so we thought that was bad, but now it seems to have partitioned, but it won't let windows download, it says there is another operating system on it, but there cant be, I just put it in.

hopefully you have the full install OS/CD, if so just follow the instructions below for a Repair install, or if that cannot be accomplished you may have to do a clean install. you do understand tho that with a clean install you will need to reinstall all the MOBO drivers,, programs and utilities you had before. you will also lose all the files you might want to have saved. Repair Install A Repair Install will replace the system files with the files on the XP CD that is used for the Repair Install. It will leave your applications and settings intact. Windows updates will need to be reapplied. SP2 will also need to be re-applied if you are using an SP1 OS/CD. Factory supplied Restore Disks will not work to do a Repair Install. If possible, Before doing the repair install copy the wpa.dbl file to a floppy and after the repair copy/paste the file to the C:\windows\system32 folder, This will save doing a re-activation of the OS. ( only if no Major Hardware changes are made.) 1=Set BIOS to boot from the CD/ROM as first boot device, With OS/CD in the drive restart the computer. 2=When the prompt to "Press any key to boot from CD/ROM appears (Do so now as you have only seconds).(Ignore when prompt appears on any reboot) 3=Windows setup, Loads files. 4=You will see Windows XP home or Pro setup. 5=To setup windows press "Enter." 6=Press F8 to accept license. 7=To repair selected Windows Installation press "R." 8=Copies files to the Hard drive. 9=Computer will Re-Boot 10=follow the on-screen instructions.. 11=Enter the "product Key" (Note- It is possible to enter a different product key from the one that was used to install the OS but you will may run into Licensing problems with MS if you need to re-activate. 12=The computer may re-boot again during the install, but do not use "the press any key" command at the prompt or you get to do it all over again. 13=Follow on screen instructions. New/Clean Install/Re-Install 1=Set Bios to boot from CD/ROM as first boot device 2=Place the OS/CD in the CD/ROM drive and Re-Boot 3=Watch for the prompt to "press any key to boot from CD/ROM" Press ASAP(Ignore when prompt appears on any reboot) (You will only get this prompt if there is an XP/OS installed on the HDD) 4=windows Setup (Loads Files) 5=To setup XP now press "enter" 6=Press F8 for license 7=To continue installing a fresh copy of windows without repairing press "ESC" 8=For a new or unpartitioned drive press"C" 9=For a drive that has partitions, operating system or any data on it, you should press "D" to delete the partition and start out with a clean drive. 10=Press "enter" 11=You will be prompted again, press "L"(You will do this for each partition) , Now you are ready to partition and format 12=Press "C" 13=To create a new partition, enter a size below and press "Enter" (Note=You can create more than one partition here or press "Enter" to utilize the entire drive 14=To setup windows on the selected partition press "enter" 15=Select format NTFS with quick option, (Should be the top selection) 16=Press "enter' 17=Wait for format to complete 18=Computer will start copying files to the installation folders (this may take several minutes) 19=Computer will re-boot, do not press any key to boot from CD/ROM when prompted. 20=follow the on-screen instructions to complete loading windows.

You have to have at least XP cd with SP1 to format that large a drive. Better of going to housecall at trend to inoculate your pc. ------------- run the first three on your old harddrive os. http://www.computing.net/security/wwwboard/tools.html -------------- go to trend housecall http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ ------- next Update your old c drive operating system (XP) to SP2 and then use disk management to format your new Harddrive. KPACHbIЙ OKTIABR

forensicsguy, I have done all that, but after it partitions, and then loads windows files, it says it was successful and reboots, but only to take me back to the beginning of set up again. Oil tan I am working on a second computor in my home, I can't get on the internet with the other computor because I get error codes with the old hard drive while booting. I don't want to put the old hard drive in this if there may be a virus involved. signing off for the night