>>>>I have a relative's computer that I have been trying to rebuild for a couple weeks now. I can go get the specific model and all that if needed, but basically it is an 6-year old Compaq. They got a very bad virus that I was unable to remove. So I backed up their data and thought I would just wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS. The wiping part went just fine, but I was unable to finish as the install itself would freeze up, regardless of which XP Pro disks I used. Well, I figured that was ok as I had some extra hard drives kicking around, but when I hooked them up and tried to install the OS, a message would popup saying that I could not do that because I was trying to install a different OS than the original and the hard drive would not be recognized. It was almost like the computer would only recognize the original drive, but none of my OS would install to that drive. I hate to give up on it as they really can't afford a new box, but I'm not sure what else to try. I have already put about 10 hours into this and I just can't seem to get it to work. Any ideas?
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>>>Jay,
>>>Can you slave in the hard drive on another machine and reformat from Windows?
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>>I did try that, but it won't recognize that drive. How could the original PC only recognize the original hard drive? I've never seen such a thing.
>
>IIRC Dell writes a special MBR to the drive which the BIOS detects. Maybe try asking Dell about recovery procedures?
>You could try using FDISK /MBR but I don't expect that will make the BIOS any happier......

Actually is Compaq, but I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, the owners do not have any of the disks that came with the PC originally. I think it may just be time to put it down.