[rivrbyte]

Hi, ray:

My niece gave me her old Dell dimension 4300, and I wanted to wipe the hard drive and reinstall my licensed OEM copy of WinXP. Do I just put the CD in the drive and it will reformat like that?
or do I have to go into the BIOS and change the boot sequence to CD if it's on another boot?

I also wanted to know if I could add/use another Hard Drive (either a Compaq 80 Ultra DMA, or a Maxtor DiamondMax plus9 - 160GB ATA/133 HD) in addition to the onboard 40 GB IDE ATA-66/ATA-100 Ultra DMA? OR use both the higher capacity HD'S like the 160GB and the 80GB in the Dell Dimension case,and toss the onboard 40GB?


Do I have to be concerned if the MoBo can support the two hard drives with the existing power supply of 250w (Dell HP-2507F3P)or this is a non-issue. if I have to flash the bios,I'll just toss the whole thing to the Haz-Mat place and be done with it...

I only needed it for a backup to replace another back up Compaq 1.2 Celeron/200MHz/80GB HD with total memory of 320Ram with this Dell 4300 Intel P-4 845 (1700) with a Max memory of 512 PC133.


Sorry for all the questions.....Thanks! :wave:

 

[Wrench97]

You can use the 2 larger drives to install XP set the first boot device to the cd drive and put the cd in and save and exit it will boot into the cd format the drive and install xp.

 

[rivrbyte]

OOOOooops

I chose to go with the Dell 4300. I was going to format the Hard Drive, so I inserted the Winxp in the Drive,thinking it was going to start, but when I turned on the monitor, it said>
"Keyboard Failure..please type in password....to bypass password functions,type in Control,Enter." I shut it down, removed the CD,restarted,this time keyed the F2 for set up then,F12 for Boot Sequence...same annoying password prompt.

So the big lug that I am thought if I remove the CMOS battery, it might help me Not to see that message, but in trying carefully to remove the battery, I accidently broke off two of the four tabs on the battery holder. The first keyboard was an HP,because of the keyboard failure message, I plugged in my own DELL keyboard,but the same thing happened.

1) Can this still work with out two of the BATTERY tabs, or

2) should I just buy a newer Mobo and start new, since the Max memory on this mobo is only 512, and the processor is about ten years old, and just use the 4300 case ? Thanks!

 

[Wrench97]

The case is proprietary so toss it nothing but a Dell board will fit in it.

 

[rivrbyte]

Thanks ok.

B.T.W....and F.M.I.....is there anyway to clear that annoying password prompt and keyboard failure message? Thanks!

Now I'll try to connect the 160GB HD to the compaq and add to the 80GB onboard. Right now, that is my backup computer,but since the cmos battery holder broke, I'll Toss the ol' dell out.

 

[Wrench97]

Sorry it's against forum rules to help with passwords since we have no way of determining whether or not it"s for legitimate use or not.
www.dell.com/support