I'm listening. Just not saying much. You lost me back at "dell inspiron finally took a dump"

I'm the sucker who anytime anything seems fishy or goes wrong with the puter I take it in for a $60 diagnosis and or repair...
Someones gotta keep them in business. I consider it my contribution to the economy

I did one time attempt to recover material from a crashed HD. But didnt make it past "you do not have permission to access this file" "please sign in as administrator"

I did replace a heat sink one time also. And upgraded my ram on a single core with hyperthreading that had 4 ram slots and only 2 were being used. Nothing was ever the same after that. Needless, 2 months later I bought a new puter. I have the capacity to learn, just never been shown or havent had enough care. Most of the time I feel like the system is so old that I am due for an upgrade anyway. My last gateway lasted me 7 years on XP before it crashed.

 

Yea, you have to make yourself the admin. Just a few clicks in the right spot.

I try to get everything I can out of what I own. It can be a defective habit.

Had a guy helping in this thread, - seamed to know a few things, then iduno, went mia. Guess he ran low on knowledge ? Either that or he's been neglecting his vitamins.

That's alright, I figure her out.

Thanks for posting Toyz .

 

To get XP installed on a SATA drive, go into the bios and set the SATA controller to the IDE mode. You will also need at least SP2 on the XP disk.

 

I have SP2 and SP3 on disk. I combed thru the bios a few times. I don't have a SATA controller. I thought the same thing at first.

Are referring to booting from the CD ?

I can't believe there's nothing in the bios for SATA.

Also, I've tried an older IDE/SATA to USB converter. Not recognizing is one problem, the other - The laptop drive won't even power up.

I ordered a different adapter. The older type uses a mini SATA cable. The SATA's I got have the mini port or connector, but connect to the laptop using the larger SATA interface connector.

The adapter I ordered has drivers and all SATA connectors. I hope that's enough.

 

Also, the original HD has a "D" partition that's been a lifesaver. I don't want to loose that.

 

This is what I'm talking about glc -

http://usb.brando.com/usb-to-ide-sat...5c042d015.html

The SATA needs power from somewhere beside a USB 2.0.

USB 3.0 can be used tho, - for data transfer.

________________________

So yea, remember these -

http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CJkBEPMCMAI

I have a few of them and they have been the cats *** for backing up and cloning. Like enclosers without the box. Acronis software pics them right up, that's all you need.

But, they won't work for a laptop SATA drive.

 

Laptop SATA has the exact same connectors as desktop SATA, and you need a USB adapter that has an AC power pack with a SATA power connector. If your laptop SATA drives don't appear to have standard SATA connectors, they may have adapters attached to them that need to be removed. This is the "go to" adapter that I've been using for years:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020&cat=HDD

You do need to dig through the bios a bit deeper to find the storage controller mode.

Having SP2 and SP3 on disk won't help you unless you have a full XP CD with SP2 or SP3 already incorporated.

 

How many plug ins for the SATA drives? I just have the one little red band wire. Like I posted.

Is there more than one?

 

If so, I'm missing the power wires. What the hell did I do with those ?

 

Yep, not one of my adapter kits have a SATA power wire then. The look just like the one you posted, not blue and they don't include that little multi colored power wire adapter. Is that the wires I'm missing ? Is that the SATA power wire?

 

That would make sense if it was. Before I go looking thru boxes and boxes of computer wire, - confirm that is indeed a SATA wire. Only thing I can figure, - I must have filed those little adapter wires with misc wires and archived them.

 

Nothing in the BIO's, dug thru them once more. No SATA enabler. It's an 05 machine, must not have it. Hopefully, I won't need it with the adapter. Plug and play. We'll see.

I ordered that SATA adapter I posted earlier. Ordered it a few days ago.

That one has a power connector for SATA drives. That's what I need. Can't locate the others, if I even had them to begin with.

 

There are 2 connectors on a SATA drive - the small one is data and the large one is power. If needed, you can get an adapter to connect a standard 4 pin Molex power connector to a SATA drive. That's actually what came with my USB adapter, because the output from the AC power pack is a Molex.

 

Thanks George. Yea, that should do it then.

The only other problem is I still don't have the correct pad for the second processor. I ordered the only size Dell offered and they sent pads for misc PCB hardware. These are to thin/ wrong material type. Can't use Arctic silver like I am on the first processor unfortunately. That's because the 1525 processors are at a different elevation from one another and use the same sink. So pad thickness is crucial. I'm shelfing it until I find the right processor pad. I ordered some others to see if I can match one up. If I order the entire processor sink, I can get a new pad. I haven't got to that point yet.

 

I believe that "second processor" is the video chip - you must have ATI or Nvidia video, not Intel?