Installing windows on a brand new hard drive

NeVeR

I will be installing windows xp on a new hard drive today (old one died), I have the windows cd, i did a google check and it says the cd will load and install ok, but a friend of mine says i might need a boot disk (floppy) to tell the hard drive to look for the cd.

can anyone let me know if i do need a boot disk?

garthv

No, you just need to set your BIOS to boot from cd

NeVeR

how do i do that ?

garthv

Uh....what machine do you have?

NeVeR

ohhh , it's a dell.... sorry it's my girlfriends computer...no idea of model.

garthv

When you see the DELL splash screen as you turn your machine on press f2
You will then be taken into a BIOS screen
Look for Bootup options and alter the bootup options so it chooses to boot from IDE/CD ROM before hard drive then save and exit.
Bang in the windows CD, start the machine and Bob's your uncle, itll boot into the windows install process. Remember to return your BIOS to the way it was after install though!

NeVeR

cheers mate.