Re: Hard Drive Died (May it Rest in Peace)
- From: "Bob Harris" <rharris270[SPAM]@hotmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:51:05 -0500
PC makers usually provide some way to restore the PC to its original
condiiton.
However, that way may be via a hidden partition.
If so, that will not work, if the hard drive is dead.
In such a case you should contact the PC maker and politely ask for a new
hard drive, with the operating system, and any other pre-installed software
that came with the PC.
Depending on the warrantee (read your contract or sales agreement), they
might charge you for the hard drive, but feel free to haggle about the
price, relative to what a similar hard drive would cost from an on-line PC
store.
Alternatively, you could get your own new hard drive (possibly used, if a
friend recently upgraded hard drive size), buy a copy of XP, and install it.
But, be sure that you download all the PC-specific drivers from the PC
maker. Although XP has pretty good generic hardware support, it may not
have everything required for your particular hardware.
Plan B might be to get a new hard drive and install one of the many free
LINUX operating systems.
As a cheap experiment (maybe as a partial solution), try downloading an ISO
image of KNOPPIX and burn it to CD (or DVD for the more complete version,
also free). Then boot the PC from optical media (may require minor chnages
to BIOS settings) and see whether it detects the hardware correctly.
Chnaces are good that it will work, even automatically configuring any
internet connection. KNOPPIX comes with Firefox, Open Office, and several
nice pieces of software.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
"xtremely poor w/ xtremely bad luck" <xtremely poor w/ xtremely bad
luck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:AEF07DA7-247A-4E31-B556-67198896E964@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My hard drive died (conveniently on the first day of summer school). My
version of Windows XP SP2 came on my laptop. It's barely 2 years old. I
have
my product key, but I do not have a boot cd because, of course, none came
with my laptop.
I'm a poor college student; if it weren't for McDonald's Dollar Menu, I'd
also be a starving. How can I install Windows XP again... (cost
effectively)?
.
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