Just in case this may help someone else. I am sure much is obvious to some, but there was a lot I didn't know.  - Sometimes when you order a hard drive it doesn't come with a data cable. (And a 2 ft cable from Best Buy doesn't go far!) - Check the User's Guide for your system if you don't know where to plug in your second drive (I didn't know which of the 3 remaining ports to use). - To use the drive, you have to turn it "ON" in your BIOS. - If you are adding a second drive to your system, you can boot from the existing Windows installation on your old drive and format the new drive from within Windows. (I thought you'd have to do this from Windows XP setup.) - The version of Ghost installed on your Dell Restore partition is an older version. The .gho and .ghs files are NOT recognized by Ghost versions 9 and later. (This means you have to restore the backup as Dell intended with Ctrl + F11. Or you have to skip that automatic process and manually restore the image.) - If you don't have a floppy drive, you need some way to boot to DOS in order to restore the backup image. I downloaded the dsrfix.zip file and created a cd from it. To create a CD from an ISO image, you can't just "copy" it to the CD. Look for instructions in your CD burning software for how to burn an ISO image. In Roxio 5.x, for example, you choose Record CD from CD Image. You must use a CD-R, not a CD-RW disc. - You can restore the backup image from your Dell Restore partition to a different drive, but then you have to restore the image manually. (This allowed me to restore the backup image from my old drive to my new drive, so I didn't have reinstall Windows, the Dell software, and all my drivers and such.) goodells.net describes how to manually restore the backup image. - At least for my system, it didn't matter which SATA port the drive was plugged into. My computer booted from what it knew as the "C:" drive (my old drive). - Before I restored the backup image, I formatted my second (new) drive as "D:". If you restore your backup image of your "C:" drive to "D:" drive it will muck up everything up. Your Dell-installed programs may not run on D:. You can't uninstall them from D:. Windows thinks that everything is on the "C:" drive. Don't laugh. I never did this before!! Microsoft has a method for reassigning or switching drive letters.    See How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows - To run Windows from a hard drive, the partition Windows is installed on has to be "active." - You may need to alter your boot.ini file so it boots from the correct drive.    - If you can't boot to Windows b/c you mucked up your boot.ini file, your system can correct this for you. (You'll need the Windows XP CD.)   See "Invalid Boot.ini" or "Windows could not start" error messages when you start your computer - I ran into numerous error messages once I was finally able to run Windows from my new drive. Fortunately, Microsoft had solutions for these. -  The system is not fully installed.   Please run setup again.    See [URL]  - Microsoft HTML Application host has encountered a problem and needs to close.   Click Start, click Run, type regsvr32 mshtml.dll, and then click OK two times. - When you try to open Event Viewer logs you get errors. As a result you can not launch Event View logs.   1. Start > Run> type in: services.msc >     2. Click OK.    3.  Scroll down to Event Viewer. Double-click on it and make the Startup type Automatic. Click Apply.     4. Also click on the Start button start the service.      5. Click OK. - If you have permissions problems, "Access is Denied" error message when you try to open a folder on your old drive.   [URL]   :-) Gretchen
Hello, I just ordered a new hard drive to replace my failing one in my Dimension 9100. I have the Windows XP reinstallation CD.  - Do I need the "Dell Resource CD/DVD"? I did not receive one with my system. - When I reinstall Windows XP on the new drive, will this also install the hidden partition so I have the option to reset to the factory settings? If not, is it possible to create that hidden partition and how do I do it? - Any other tips are appreciated. I was just going to follow the article How To Restore or Reinstall Microsoft® Windows® on a Dell™ Computer. Thanks!   Gretchen
manually installing win xp on new hard drive