I have a dell dimension e510 which i bought 4 years ago. My computer crashed bad about 2 years ago and I had 3 techs out to fix my comp. Everything was replaced in this thing EXCEPT for the hard drive (i still had a warranty). I decided to get a hard drive at Fry's due to the fact my comp still didn't work after multiple tries from techs. I purchased a hard drive from Fry's with the rep assuring me it was the correct hard drive. I put the hard drive in correctly and put in the operations disk..... all i get from my monitor is a - - - - - - at the top left corner. Am I missing something? Can anybody shed some LIGHT on this? I'm about 1 step from tossing it 50 feet from concrete.

thank youDoes the machine now have 2 hard drives or one? What model and IDE or SATA drive? It's a seagate 640gb sata. 1 hard drive.You have to install Windows on the new hard drive. Right now it's "blank" (empty).I used the operating system disc and after is was formatting the partitions my comp said a file was missing. So i exited the set up and it automatically rebooted. When my computer restarted it was just a black screen that says "NTLDR is missing" and the only option I get is to RESTART again in which it will say the same thing.You are replacing an old hd with a new hd and want to install the OS on it - is that correct?

If so, first make sure you are using an original, retail OS CD. Then boot to that cd, format the drive, and install the OS.

Are you following that procedure exactly?That is exactly what I'm doing I am using the OS disk dell sent. It doesn't get pass the copying point it will state that a file can not be copied.Quote from: fortytozero on April 25, 2010, 01:15:20 PM

That is exactly what I'm doing I am using the OS disk dell sent. It doesn't get pass the copying point it will state that a file can not be copied.

That is exactly what I'm doing I am using the OS disk dell sent. It doesn't get pass the copying point it will state that a file can not be copied.