My laptop died...

It appears that my 4-year-old Dell laptop has bitten the dust. I tried to fire it up on Saturday and all I got after the "DELL" wake-up screen was a blank screen with a lonely DOS cursor blinking in the top left corner. However, the hard drive is still good - I pulled it out, threw it in a case, plugged it into my work laptop, and everything looks hunky-dory.

As much as I'd like to pop for a new Mac Book, I think I may just pick up another PC lapper - I wouldn't be opposed to something lightly used. Question is, would I be able to get a new machine, swap in my old drive (equipped with XP Pro), and have it run just fine?

Only if you get the exact same model of laptop. Otherwise you would have to reinstall the OS to get all the right drivers. I'm no expert, blah, blah, blah.

If you go to Fry's or Compusa, you can get the oem XP Pro for about $110. Or you can find someone to lend you their disk and use the old XP key from your old computer. Most likely you hard drive is a PATA and most, if not all, of the newer computers use SATA. Therefore, you probably will not be able to put your old hard drive in a new computer.

Buy a Mac book? They are $1100 for a 13.3" Mac book pro at Fry's, but I might be inclined to do this next time mine fails.

I'd try booting from the OS CD. If that works, it may just be the OS on your hard drive.

By the way, If you buy from Dell or Lenovo's websites, you can downgrade to XP pro for free.

you can pop a hard drive form one pc into anther and it will work... sort of. xp is bad about auto installing critical system drivers os it will run slow/unstable. vista has a good list of auto install drivers and windows 7 is the best yet, you can make a ghost of your drive and move it to a pc with a 100% different hard ware and drive size and it will work out just fine.

for your xp install you have on your drive i would recommend what ever pc you get, take a xp disc and boost from it and you can reinstall just the winxp part w/o formatting. this is your best bet i can think of with out going over board. it will keep all files on your drive, everything will be still installed and your xp and system drivers will be reinstalled.

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Originally Posted by wrx74

I'd try booting from the OS CD. If that works, it may just be the OS on your hard drive.

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what he said first before anything

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Originally Posted by Radio-Active

By the way, If you buy from Dell or Lenovo's websites, you can downgrade to XP pro for free.

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go win7, it's the greatest win os ever, i can't believe how well it's doing on my laptop and work pcs.


and macs are over rated and even more over priced and you can install os X on a pc anyway
http://dailyapps.net/2007/10/hack-at...-3-easy-steps/

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Originally Posted by jeff_man

go win7, it's the greatest win os ever, i can't believe how well it's doing on my laptop and work pcs.


and macs are over rated and even more over priced and you can install os X on a pc anyway
http://dailyapps.net/2007/10/hack-at...-3-easy-steps/

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+ > 9000 All of the above, except for the portion about running OSX on a non-mac PC. It's a TON of work, especially with a laptop and it never works right.

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Originally Posted by jeff_man

go win7, it's the greatest win os ever, i can't believe how well it's doing on my laptop and work pcs.

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Anything has got to be better than Vista(I hope), but I have kind of lost faith in Micro-shaft's BLOAT LOADER.

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Originally Posted by jeff_man

and macs are over rated and even more over priced and you can install os X on a pc anyway
http://dailyapps.net/2007/10/hack-at...-3-easy-steps/

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Most of the Hackintosh's I have seen have issues with hardware compatibility, last I checked. Specifically the sound card and wifi were the issues I had. Yeah, you can get a cheaper built computer, but when you compare Apple for apple, I find that the prices are generally comparable. By the same arguement, why would one purchase a Lexus, Cadilac, or Lincoln when you can get the same car from Toyota, Chevy or Ford for half the price.

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Originally Posted by Radio-Active

By the same arguement, why would one purchase a Lexus, Cadilac, or Lincoln when you can get the same car from Toyota, Chevy or Ford for half the price.

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i buy pcs cuz like my car i like doing my own upgrades and making it better, buy a apple and you can only buy apple parts with are over priced versions of pc parts that the apple soft ware locks you out of using. that say it for quality control but it's price control