Laptop Hard Drive Locking?

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 5:30 am

I just bought a Dell Latitude laptop for Â£30 with no hard drive.

Since I have a 60gb laptop hard drive, I decided to install it..

Anyway, after windows install copied over the files to the empty hard drive and restarted itself, I keep getting blue screen before Windows installation gets underway.

I've tried this several times now with different windows discs.

Does Dell have some kind of motherboard lock on the hard drives that come with it? If so, how can I bypass it or make the hard drive compatible..

I'm going to try another hard drive I've got that is 40gb and see if I have any progress with that.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 8:06 am

Reverse ground and 3.3v

Try the 40gig.

SS

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 8:15 am

They all seem to do the same thing..

Blue screen.

Because of the size of the laptop, It doesn't have a CD drive.

Shall I try a different operating system?

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 9:29 am

EnterTheHatrix wrote:They all seem to do the same thing..

Blue screen.

Because of the size of the laptop, It doesn't have a CD drive.

Shall I try a different operating system?

So how did you install Windows on it? If you did it the way I think, I think I know a better way, but I don't want to type it unless its needed.

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:08 am

Started install via PC, then put it in laptop to continue installation.

I tried ubuntu and still nothing. not a blue screen, but Ubuntu doesn't load.

It's not the hard drive since it loads on the PC...

I should also add it has no screen.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 12:18 pm

so how far did you let it install on the PC?

if you got past the part where it installs all the drivers it needs you might just be creating a completely incompatible installation of windows. (unless is w98)

in general, ive had very little success in transplanting windows installations.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:15 pm

For the Windows install, start on your PC. When it gets to the restart your computer point (near the end of the install), turn the computer off and put the hard drive in the laptop and power it on. Not sure if it works, I just remember reading something about it to install Windows on laptops without cd drives.

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:25 pm

Didn't work v.

I'm taking another approach.

2 30gb partitions.

1 partition is going to have XP installed from PC, The other partition is the destination for the new installation.

I think the problem before was that when I selected copy to hard drive, it copied it to my PC hard drive not the laptop hard drive.. As a result, it couldn't load the files.

Same applies with CD ROM.. Not present, can't load files.

This way, the files will be accessible.

If THIS doesn't work... The RAM could be buggered.

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:45 pm

no, that wont work because they have different hardware, just copy setup files to the HDD and start setup from the laptop using a Boot Disk.

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:57 pm

paul4990 wrote:no, that wont work because they have different hardware, just copy setup files to the HDD and start setup from the laptop using a Boot Disk.

No Drives... No CD, No Floppy drive, No Hard Drive, No Screen.

This model laptop doesn't have any drives besides a hard drive bay, which I've got a hard drive in. I basically bought a laptop which is just motherboard, RAM, battery and power supply.

My thoughts are the owner broke the screen, took the hard drive out to preserve their work and sold it for pennies.

My interest was purely to use it as a thin client.. Rip the hinge off and just have a small, cheap, portable server.

EnterTheHatrix · Post by **EnterTheHatrix** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 4:26 pm

It appears to have worked so far...

Installing 20gb partition of Windows, then copy files over and make install on laptop after starting the ball rolling with install..

38gb Windows XP partition for the laptop, I've just got to delete the original XP partition and resize.

Just waiting for install to finish.

Talk about crazy.. I've made about 9 XP installs on this hard drive today.

Post by **Triton** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 7:04 pm

how i tried to do it on my lifebook ( i eventualy gave up on xp and did ME instead) was copy setup files to the hdd, buy a usb floppy drive from walmart (returned it later on) and install from the hdd but it didnt work and i worked at it for 2 days before i gave up and went with me the same way

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 7:15 pm

@EnterTheHatrix- How were you doing this at first? It sounded like you were trying to just copy the files.

dshacker · Post by **dshacker** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:53 pm

sounds sort of like it, in my case, a laptop sometimes also has to have a screen that's wired into the board so the board checks for it. If anything goes wrong, just format the HDD on another computer, or just set up a small drive in and connect ethernet to a computer and to the laptop, and work your way from there. At the most, I've never had a problem installing xp, but I dont use that anymore since one, I'm on a mac now, and two, my dell 4550 uses vista, so Im all good, but one of my concerns is why only macs can boot both a windows and mac os. I mean, isnt it possible to run mac os on a microsoft computer. Cause if it is, then by all means Ill do it. Tonight, I'll see if I can format my dell to osx tiger. If i works out, then Ill post it.

Felino · Post by **Felino** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:40 pm

What you are refering to is somthing callled a hackintosh. This is illeagle o do, and very difficult. Pm me if you want some help doing this... the mods probably wouln't like discussion of this here.

D