HP Laptop Hard Drive Replacement

JFish53

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Mar 6, 2010
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I have a HP 8510 laptop running Win 7 but I needed to run XP for legacy programs that don't run under Win 7. I ordered a SATA replacement HD (500GB @ 7200 rpm) but I need to format it (I think) since it was shipped from a supplier but did not include any formating disks. I tried using the Windows XP CD (for Dell) I had from my Dell Laptop but after booting the laptop from the CD and watching the Windows XP Setup program run, the screen displays a message saying " Setup did not find any hard drives installed on your computer. Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3". How can you format / partition the hard drive?
 

PhilFrisbie

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XP does not recognize SATA drives without an additional driver. However, you may be able to set up the drive in the BIOS to emulate IDE.

But I am unsure what you are trying to do. Are you formatting the drive so you can copy Win7 to it and still have room to dual-boot with XP? If so then that is not needed. Whatever software you are using to copy Win7 to the new drive will format it for you.

Or are you planning to swap hard drives to run XP or Win7?
 

JFish53

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I am trying to have two separate hard drives, one running on Win 7 that I have no amin rights to and the other to run XP to use legacy programs that are not supported by Win 7 and that I would have admin rights to. I would swap the two hard drives as needed to do the work I need to do without having to lug around two different laptops. But at the moment, I am stuck since I cannot get the Windows CD for Dell to recognize my optical drive on the HP 6510
 

JFish53

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Hang the 9

Thanks for the reply. I decided to seek out an IT guy who found the following issues: 1) the hard drive was not formatted; the XP etup dosk I had was for an Dell and the HP laptop would not recognize the disk since it was designed for different manufacturer; and 3) many drivers some applications had to be loaded separately after a correct boot disk was found.

He was able to get the system up and running using XP running on the HP8510p laptop. So all is well at the moment

Cheers