Loaded a new Seagate HD and XP disc - get flashing cursor

[Guest]

I have a laptop Dell L400 and the old drive died. I also had a bad
partition sector. I just bought a 60 GB HD (Seagate) and put it into
my laptop along with the Windows XP (full version). I configured the
BIOS so it boots from the CD drive. I can hear it spinning me external
CD-ROM drive, but my screen just shows a blinking cursor.

When I boot from the HD it predictably says no operating system.

What should I do ?

POB

 

[DL]

You appear to be saying you have two hd's installed.
If this is the case, remove the dead hd and put the new one in its place.
Clean install winxp

 

[paulmd]

I have a laptop Dell L400 and the old drive died. I also had a bad
partition sector. I just bought a 60 GB HD (Seagate) and put it into
my laptop along with the Windows XP (full version). I configured the
BIOS so it boots from the CD drive. I can hear it spinning me external
CD-ROM drive, but my screen just shows a blinking cursor.

When I boot from the HD it predictably says no operating system.

What should I do ?

POB

Will you please stop making new threads about the same problem? Your
situation is getting hard to track.... just post updates to the old
ones.

Anyway. EXTERNAL USB CD drives are not bootable with that machine. You
need to use the internal cd drive. OR: Another thing to do is to make
the boot floppy set. You need 6 blank ibm formatted floppies.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q310994



Another thing, the XP cd gives you a certian number of seconds (i think
5) to press a key to boot from it, or it tries to boot the hard drive.
Sometimes the display doesn't warm up quick enough to see the message.
So if you hear the cd drive spinning, just tap the spacebar a bunch of
times.

At a certian point, I'm going to tell you to stop monkeying around and
get the thing professionally repaired.