New or used hard drive... Experiencing issues
New or used hard drive... Experiencing issues
Hey there, so I recently discovered a computer in the trash that someone was discarding. It had a quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, and a GTX 9800 graphics card. The catch was it didn’t come with a hard drive. I brought it back home and tried to boot it using an old HP hard drive from another PC. Immediately after the startup screen, errors appeared—something I expected. But since I didn’t plan to keep it long-term, I left it in my HP and didn’t worry.
Fortunately, I found someone on Craigslist offering a 500GB SATA hard drive for $20 with cables. I brought it home and connected it to my Dell XPS 8500. I noticed a lot of program files and Windows folders on it. After checking the system32 folder, I saw a Windows 7 Ultimate license. Since the drive might not run Windows again, I installed Linux Lite 2.4.64-bit.
Today I assembled the setup with the new drive and everything connected. The same errors appeared as before. When I tried a factory reset, I realized someone who had used that drive earlier had set passwords. I’m currently transferring Linux Lite to the drive from my XPS 8500, but I’m unsure what to do next. Can I still boot Windows 7 Ultimate without the original CD? Is there a way to reset it without entering the password? Also, if I boot from F12 during startup and select “Boot from Hard Drive,” will it work automatically? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!
Instead of using gParted, connect the drive to USB, start it and format/repartition the SATA device. This should erase any passwords linked to it. Once done, you can install any operating system on it using your main PC—just specify the correct HDD. After removal, select a standard boot device and everything should function normally in another computer.