Help! New hard drive in laptop

[Magn3tar]

Well my laptop recently crashed (bad HD) so I replaced it. I had what I thought to be a burnt copy of windows XP that could install fresh onto the new HD but it won't recognize it I guess since it's a burnt cd?

Here are the options I know of to me to resolve this..

1. Purchase a System Restore disk from HP for $15 and wait 3-5 Days to get it.

2. I tried creating a System Restore backup on this computer, which is a Compaq, but my HP Laptop did not recognize it as a disk

3. Search computer shops locally for non-licensed copies of Windows XP. My laptop already has the windows activaction code on the bottom of it.

I'm not going to spend $200 or whatever on a fresh copy of windows, I'm just impatient, I'd like to get my laptop up and running today. Anyone else have any ideas?

[kaeser]

by the time you figure all this out, it's goign to be 3-5 days anyways... and a licenced restore disk will have all of the added laptop-proprietary software and drivers that you won't have if you just use a copy of XP. for instance, the quick-button things, and FN keys.

what kind of laptop, and what kind of HD did you get?
i'm really looking forward to those SSD's that are coming out now to drop in price.

-cheers

[Alc]

Well my laptop recently crashed (bad HD) so I replaced it. I had what I thought to be a burnt copy of windows XP that could install fresh onto the new HD but it won't recognize it I guess since it's a burnt cd?

Any laptop that's got a CD drive should be able to read a CDR, any CD drive from the early 90s onwards should. Sounds more like a dead optical drive to me, test it with some other CDs/CDRs to make sure.

[Magn3tar]

I don't believe it is a bad CD-Rom Drive. As I had created a CD on this (compaq) computer, using the option to create a restore disk. My laptop ID'd the CD but it said that it was not the correct hardware profile.

Yeah, I think it'd be best if I were too just order a new one from HP. Thought there might be a trick to my problem but I suppose not.

It's a Western Digital 60gb HD. Nothing special. I'm just glad this was the only problem with my laptop.

[foq]

You don't just burn windows like a normal data cd. You need to put it in some kind of image format (.iso is a very popular image format), then, (well this is how I do it anyways,) you need to open up nero, and go to Backup, then look for Burn Image to Disc.
Now you fish through your hard drive to find your Windows .iso (or whatever other image format it may be,) and burn it at a reasonable speed like 24x to make sure you don't get any burn errors.

[Alc]

I don't believe it is a bad CD-Rom Drive. As I had created a CD on this (compaq) computer, using the option to create a restore disk. My laptop ID'd the CD but it said that it was not the correct hardware profile.

Are we talking about the recovery CD or the burned Windows XP CD here? Because I was talking about the latter, and I'd be concerned if my laptop wasn't reading a CDR that worked on other computers. That's basically a drive problem.

Yeah, I think it'd be best if I were too just order a new one from HP.

If they'll send the recovery CD to you for free, do it anyway. Useful thing to have around.