Old desktop help please.

Bobblink

Hello techy folk.

My old desktop PC has suffered a HDD failure. I had no important stuff on it, that is backed up elsewhere. I have another HDD that I can put in the PC, but I have no restore disks and the COA sticker is worn and unreadable.

The machine is an Emachines T3516, was running XP Pro. The motherboard is a MSI RC410M. Is there anywhere that I could get an XP pro disk to reinstall on the new HDD? I have a disk with the system drivers on it, but that is all.

I know that XP is old, and that support is ending soon, but prior to the HDD failure this was a perfectly usable machine for my needs.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help or point me in the right direction.

Coopdivi

There's plenty of sellers on Ebay. Just make sure you pick one with excellent feed back - 99% or better.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R6.TR10.TRC0.A0.Xxp+&_nkw=windows+xp+professional&_sacat=0&_from=R40

baxie

I found this - http://us-store.emachines.com/category.aspx?catid=5

It's in the US, there appears to be no info on the UK site.

Is the drive totally wrecked, not booting or anything?

baxie

Just got the UK site to load, but no details on Recovery Disks. Have you tried contacting them?

Bobblink

Thank you for the replies :beer:

Sadly the HDD is dead, it did make a ginding noise and now it clicks repetitively, my friend put it in his PC as a "slave", he confirmed it as dead.

My friend suggested putting Ubuntu on the new HDD, but I'm not sure, it took me ages to feel comfortable withXP

NiftyDigits

Pointed...

NiftyDigits

baxie wrote: »

I found this - http://us-store.emachines.com/category.aspx?catid=5

It's in the US, there appears to be no info on the UK site.

Is the drive totally wrecked, not booting or anything?

.....

Note: Per Microsoft regulations, requests for Windows XP Pro recovery media are no longer supported.

.....

Bobblink

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Pointed...

Thank you for "pointing" me in the right direction :beer:

poppellerant

I know you said that the machine is perfectly fine for your needs. But I would definitely recommend increasing the amount of RAM - from specs online, it only has 512MB. 1GB would make things a lot more comfortable.

A quick look on eBay, reveals the following bargains:
1GB for £4.99 - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231113519996
2GB for £10.90 - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281252985351

NiftyDigits

Is that the original Motherboard? The BIOS linked to on the website is for an Intel Board; D101GGC.

Kernel_Sanders

Bobblink wrote: »

My friend suggested putting Ubuntu on the new HDD, but I'm not sure, it took me ages to feel comfortable withXP

It's really not much different user-wise to Windows. It's the one to go for if you use a mobile broadband dongle.

poppellerant wrote: »

I know you said that the machine is perfectly fine for your needs. But I would definitely recommend increasing the amount of RAM - from specs online, it only has 512MB.

The OP will find this is more than adequate for many Linux distroes.