[Deacon420]

I bought this desktop computer with the hard drive missing. Supposedly the people selling it were concerned about their personal info so they just yanked out the hard drive. They said that's all that was wrong with the computer and they upgraded so they got rid of it. Question is....how do I install a new hard drive and load the operating system? Do I hook up the hard drive then boot from the disc? Do I install the hard drive drivers? If so in when and what order? I downloaded all the drivers for the system but I obviously will install those after the OS installation. Can anyone give me the step by step on how to do this correctly?

Thank you.

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Not knowing your model number we can't give specific details, but you may need to install the SATA drivers during the process of booting the installation CD. You haven't even told us what operating system you intend to use. You will probably need to format the hard drive, although Windows may be able to do that automatically. Make sure your new drive is in the master positition and your BIOS settings for it are correct. The put the CD in and during boot make sure it boots from the CD. Failures at this stage have no consequences and take little time to correct so don't be afraid to try things.

[Tyger]

Not knowing your model number we can't give specific details, but you may need to install the SATA drivers during the process of booting the installation CD. You haven't even told us what operating system you intend to use. You will probably need to format the hard drive, although Windows may be able to do that automatically. Make sure your new drive is in the master positition and your BIOS settings for it are correct. The put the CD in and during boot make sure it boots from the CD. Failures at this stage have no consequences and take little time to correct so don't be afraid to try things.

[Deacon420]

Thanks! How do you set the BIOS? It's a Sony VGC-RA837G and I'm going to install XP MCE. So as I'm installing the OS it may ask me to install the drivers to the hard drive? If I do have to format the drive how do I go about that? Thanks again.