I would recommend Driver Magician to collect all the drivers from the original PC. It is free to use unless you want to automatically reinstall the drivers when you've rebuilt.
good idea.. thinking about it all the drivers should be in the "dell/drivers" folder so it should be possible to copy them to a usb stick
Not quite sure why you need an XP CD for creating a recovery disk - won't the CD be enough in itself?
I'd also recommend firing up Device Manager and writing down what hardware you've got - network adapter as the bare minimum, but also audio controller and display adapter [you can often get more detail on this latter from Control Panel - Display - Advanced - Adapter, I think it is (not got XP in front of me atm)]. you might also want to jot down other stuff like modem, PCMCIA card, touchpad, etc. This is so you can grab the right drivers after reinstall (they have them on the Dell site - but even after entering your Service Tag, they often offer a choice, such as different manufacturers' network chips, and it pays to know what drivers you had installed before!). As an alternative to writing, just expand the + signs next to items of interest, resize the devmgmt screen so they all fit, then take a screenshot and paste it into Wordpad or something. (And then copy it off to a different machine!)
I've got plenty of Dell OEM XP 32-bit Professional CDs that came with work laptops. PM me if you'd like me to pop one in the post. (It would be an original, so no worries about it having been repackaged with all manner of nasties!)
SpinRite is good software for checking hard disks. It can be obtained from.... the Internet.
Albert_Chandler: Yes, everything I need seems to be in the Dell drivers' folder...and, yes, I do have Dell Media Direct but I do actually have the the CD for this as it was originally provided,
chandlerp: Thanks for that. I have downloaded DM Lite which looks very useful.
Flufan: As I said earlier it’s Plan B, now. I am going to upgrade as XP only has 10 months to run before support is withdrawn. Thanks for the offer of the CDs, though.
By the way, would anybody be able to recommend a decent SSD to replace the two HDDs. Crucial do an M4 and a newer M500. Should one have a preference over either of these models or, indeed, any other makes? I am thinking of the 128GB or the 256GB.
Plan B is to simply purchase a new SSD, bung it in place
of the two HDDs and install a newer OS out of the box.
A better idea would be to replace only one of the hard drives with an SSD rather than both, so you'll have the SSD for
your Windows installation and all your other software, with one of the hard drives kept installed and used for storage.
That way, if at a later date Windows ever needs to be re-installed, you only need to reformat the SSD and re-install
your OS, without having to backup all your documents, photos and anything else on the storage hard drive.
Yes, I am planning to do exactly that, DJ. I shall obtain a caddy for the functioning HDD and use it as an external device and install as you describe. Thanks.
Comments
good idea.. thinking about it all the drivers should be in the "dell/drivers" folder so it should be possible to copy them to a usb stick
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=33656
64 bit though.
I'd also recommend firing up Device Manager and writing down what hardware you've got - network adapter as the bare minimum, but also audio controller and display adapter [you can often get more detail on this latter from Control Panel - Display - Advanced - Adapter, I think it is (not got XP in front of me atm)]. you might also want to jot down other stuff like modem, PCMCIA card, touchpad, etc. This is so you can grab the right drivers after reinstall (they have them on the Dell site - but even after entering your Service Tag, they often offer a choice, such as different manufacturers' network chips, and it pays to know what drivers you had installed before!). As an alternative to writing, just expand the + signs next to items of interest, resize the devmgmt screen so they all fit, then take a screenshot and paste it into Wordpad or something. (And then copy it off to a different machine!)
I've got plenty of Dell OEM XP 32-bit Professional CDs that came with work laptops. PM me if you'd like me to pop one in the post. (It would be an original, so no worries about it having been repackaged with all manner of nasties!)
SpinRite is good software for checking hard disks. It can be obtained from.... the Internet.
chandlerp: Thanks for that. I have downloaded DM Lite which looks very useful.
Flufan: As I said earlier it’s Plan B, now. I am going to upgrade as XP only has 10 months to run before support is withdrawn. Thanks for the offer of the CDs, though.
By the way, would anybody be able to recommend a decent SSD to replace the two HDDs. Crucial do an M4 and a newer M500. Should one have a preference over either of these models or, indeed, any other makes? I am thinking of the 128GB or the 256GB.
your Windows installation and all your other software, with one of the hard drives kept installed and used for storage.
That way, if at a later date Windows ever needs to be re-installed, you only need to reformat the SSD and re-install
your OS, without having to backup all your documents, photos and anything else on the storage hard drive.
remember if you use windows 7 or 8, dell do not have drivers for these os, although xp ones may well work