I have an old Dell Dimension with XP SP2. My wife basically uses it for email and surfing. It still has the original small 40GB hard drive, which I think is acting up. Every few days at boot up, it goes to a black screen saying to hit F1 to boot, instead of going to Windows. F1 does nothing, but when I power cycle the PC it seems to work normally.

Question 1) Does this sound like a hard drive problem?

Question 2) If so, before the HD dies completely, I have an 80GB drive from a Compaq that fried the motherboard. I was hoping to swap the drives, and would like to "clone" (?) from the old drive to the new one, all programs, files, and settings. Basically make a duplicate. Then remove the old drive, and keep the new one as drive C.

I have no idea how to do this, and am hoping it is possible to do so with XP, and not buying any special cloning software.

Can someone direct me to an article on how to do this? I searched, but everything I found on the topic was trying to sell something.

Thanks...

(1) Yes

(2) you need cloning software and the ability to install the both drives together. With laptops that usually means a USB to (PATA, DE,ATA) or SATA adapter. With desktops you need to find a place to plug in the second drive.

Thanks KeepIt...

Can you recommend any cloning software that is straightforward?

No way to do it with XP?

Spotmau.com - Fix your computer easily!

Nope. Primary reason is, the sizes of the drives are different so it's not a straight copy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mitchsc

Can you recommend any cloning software that is straightforward?

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My personal favorite is Acronis TrueImage - brain dead simple (as it gets), bare metal, fast, will resize, restore to different hardware...