Installing Windows on fresh Hard Disk without recovery disk

Discussion in 'Acer Aspire One' started by saurabhj, May 8, 2011.

  1. saurabhj

    saurabhj

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    Hi All,

    I have a Acer aspire one D260. The hard disk on the laptop crashed last month. The hard disk was not listed on the Bios so I assume I cannot recover anything from that H/D.

    Anyways, I ordered a new Hard Disk (as my laptop is not under warranty, moved to another country and dont have international warranty). I replaced the hard disk and the new hard disk is now listed in the BIOS. My next issue is, how to install Windows XP Home on the new Hard Disk. I tried to install using regular Windows XP Home iso and a USB drive, but it seems to not detect the new Hard Drive (WD SATA 500 GB).

    I would like to mention that I dont have a recovery disk as the laptop didn't come with any disk and I didn't make any :cry: .

    Can some one help me on how to install XP Home on a blank hard drive without recovery disk.
     
    saurabhj, May 8, 2011
    #1
  2. saurabhj

    donec

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    Re: Installing Windows on fresh Hard Disk without recovery d

    Sounds like you do not have a CD/DVD drive nor do you have an original licensed XP Home disk?
    Are you sure that the XP ISO file is good? How are you trying to install XP from the USB? Have you tried to install any other OS to the drive, example Linux Mint? Linux Mint is possible the easiest version of Linux to install and if you can install it then you will know that there is no hardware problems and that XP should install if you have working software.
     
    donec, May 8, 2011
    #2
  3. saurabhj

    saurabhj

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    Re: Installing Windows on fresh Hard Disk without recovery d

    Thats correct, I dont have a CD/DVD drive, but checked with my friend and he has one that I can borrow. But now it boils down to a installable ISO.

    The XP ISO looks fine as I installed XP Home using the same iso on a virtual machine on my other PC. I thought the drive is fine as the bios is showing the correct model for the HD. But since you have created a doubt in my mind, I will try to install Linux on the machine to rule out the possibility of the drive not functional.

    I tried to install XP using USB by following the instruction found on different locations on net (before reaching this Forum). This includes (I guess)
    1. Making the USB drive bootable
    2. Copying the required installation file to the USB drive.

    By following the steps, it does boot from the USB, and launches the XP installer. But it does not detect the HD. My guess is the installer does not have appropriate SATA driver included in the regular XP Home installer CD.
     
    saurabhj, May 9, 2011
    #3
  4. saurabhj

    donec

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    donec, May 9, 2011
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  5. saurabhj

    saurabhj

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    Re: Installing Windows on fresh Hard Disk without recovery d

    I am not sure of the File system on the disk. But I assume it was just blank disk. It was direct from manufacturer.

    I also managed to get the Linux Fedora 14 installed on the machine using the Live USB. So now I can confirm that the HD is fine and has ext4 file system on it.

    But i would still like to have windows on it. Any suggestions.
     
    saurabhj, May 13, 2011
    #5
  6. saurabhj

    donec

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    Re: Installing Windows on fresh Hard Disk without recovery d

    If the entire hard drive is formated at ext4 then Windows will not be able to see it. To fix the problem you could use Fedora 14 to create a partition on the drive of either fat32 or NTFS that is the size of the Windows partition you want to use and then let Windows reformat the partition during installation. If it was me I would use Fedora 14 to reformat the entire drive in NTFS then install Windows or delete all partitions on the drive and let Windows use the either NTFS partition or the empty space to create the partitions Windows wants. Then I would use Fedora 14 to resize the Windows partition to leave empty space the size I wanted for Linux and then install Linux there.
     
    donec, May 13, 2011
    #6
  7. saurabhj

    jrizal

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    Re: Installing Windows on fresh Hard Disk without recovery d

    You can use Wintoflash to copy a bootable version of Windows on a flash drive.

    http://wintoflash.com/home/en/
     
    jrizal, Sep 22, 2011
    #7
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