Is it possible to buy an 80 gig ide hhd with xp pro already written to it for DELL? I load my own as needed but it would be very handy to have a ready supply of hhd's with the OS on them.
Why don't you just do it yourself if you have the software that came with it.Just replace it with the new hard drive and install Windows XP Pro on it. Then remove it then use it for a spare.You would have to load all the motherboard drivers specific to your Dell.
Use an imaging software like easeus todo you'd have options of cloning or creating images of C as well as images for dissimilar hardware ,system images are ideal since they take up less room & you can have more of them at varying intervals of install,say just OS & no software,or OS + a few updates & extra 3rd party software or fully updated etc,etc,
The reason I ask is that for the first time I came across a tower that would NOT allow me to run the CD, of which I have 5 copies. Every one gave errors of different types. I resorted to installing it in a good tower for the task. I picked one copy at random and it loaded perfectly the first time. After that I loaded my other programs and got as far as #7. Then installer errors for any program I tried. I am convinced either the mobo is bad or the PSU as the system is sitting open on my kitchen table with one yellow led lit on the board but now power to anything else. No power board lights, no diagnostic lights, no fan. I have a replacement PSU coming. Now that the hhd drive is done I can find out what other issues exist once the PSU is installed. As an aside I put in a bid for a DELL 8300 loaded with LINUX. Can you tell me from a users point of view if there are any major differences with the look of the desktop, key strokes, ect?
Key strokes are as they would be on a pc distrowatch.com has the various versions of linux & what they look like (clik the picture icon when you scroll or right click to open tab to get a short descript & screenshot),the closest you'll get to windows is zorin which is based off ubuntu,majority of software for linux is got from synaptic or whatever package manager is installed,wine is used to run windows programs in emulation,there is a steep learning curve for linux unless your familiar with command line type tasks,mostly tho stuff just works,you can run linux directly off cd
