Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - Salvaging failing laptop HD contents w/o System Install CD

gpetty · 10-08-2008, 11:45 PM

About six months ago, I bought a reconditioned Dell Latitude D505 laptop, and it came with WinXP installed but no system installation CD, and no c:/I386 folder.

Lately, my internal HD has been acting flaky, and I've succeeded in copying all of the data files on it (both system and personal) to an external USB HD using xxClone. I also bought a replacement internal HD. Unfortunately, since the external USB drive isn't bootable, I can't figure out how I'm going to transfer everything from the old internal HD to the new one without buying a brand new copy of Windows XP to install on the latter.

Can anyone suggest a way around this problem?

10-08-2008, 11:45 PM	#1 (permalink)
gpetty Registered User Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 1 OS: WinXP	Salvaging failing laptop HD contents w/o System Install CD About six months ago, I bought a reconditioned Dell Latitude D505 laptop, and it came with WinXP installed but no system installation CD, and no c:/I386 folder. Lately, my internal HD has been acting flaky, and I've succeeded in copying all of the data files on it (both system and personal) to an external USB HD using xxClone. I also bought a replacement internal HD. Unfortunately, since the external USB drive isn't bootable, I can't figure out how I'm going to transfer everything from the old internal HD to the new one without buying a brand new copy of Windows XP to install on the latter. Can anyone suggest a way around this problem?