Help in re-installing operating system

My son has an Acer laptop but the hard drive went. I have put in a new hard drive (western digital) and need to put in an operating system. There were 3 recovery discs that came with his laptop that are for re-installing but I think because I have a new hard drive it is not working. I got to the second disc and then it had an error reading the disc so I asuming I can't use these now that my laptop doesn't have the original Acer hard drive?

I have XP discs that came with my own pc but they say that they are only for a Dell computer. Can I use these on an Acer laptop I don't know if it makes any difference but the laptop was dual core. Please help a novice.

 

Are the XP disks Windows XP disks or are they Dell Recovery Disks? XP disks can be used on anything. Just remember to use your own cd-key that's on your laptop. It should be printed on the side or something with a barcode on it.

 

Hi they say Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition including Service pack 1. Not an actual Windows disc but it does say operating System. Thanks for your reply.

 

It should work. The worst thing that could happen is that it doesn't work.

 

Sounds like the standard Dell Recovery Discs. I'm not absolutely sure that those Dell discs would not work to install Win XP on the Acer computer, but I doubt very much they will work. And, even if they did, keep in mind the Dell discs contain device drivers for your Dell computer, not for any other computer. But, you might give it a try; EEEEDIOT may be right. At the very least, you would have to find a source to download some drivers; Acer's site should have them.

Here's an Acer Service & Support page with a link to Purchase Recovery CDs for your Acer unit. I'd look into that. The cost is probably quite low.

 

I think contacting Acer customer service might save you some headaches in the long run (though customer service is, more often than not, a headache in itself).

It sounds like your recovery CD's are scratched/damaged or maybe were defective from the very beginning. So yes, contacting Acer for another set of recovery disks might be worthwhile as you can do an easy reinstall complete with all required drivers for your machine (assuming you haven't swapped out or added any hardware other than the new hard drive).

If, on the other hand, you choose to use the Windows install disks from the Dell machine, I think that should work fine. I believe Dell does provide a regular legit MS Windows install disk with their systems though it's labeled a bit differently from the Microsoft install disks we're used to seeing. The Dell drivers for that system are, I imagine, on another disk separate from the OS disk so they won't be installed automatically if you use that OS install disk from Dell.

But in that case you should, as EEDIOT indicated, use your Acer laptop Windows key to activate the installation. And you'll need to obtain the correct drivers for some of your laptop's hardware devices if you don't already have them. You should be able to find them on the web for free download, but it may be a bit of work (figuring out the exact model, and revision number sometimes, of a particular piece of hardware and making sure the driver is designed to work with your version of Windows are two things to watch out for). You can avoid those hassles if you decide to purchase another set of recovery disks for your specific laptop from the manufacturer, Acer, as those should include all needed drivers integrated into the install package. (Again, this assumes you haven't made any changes to this laptop's hardware other than replacing the old defective hard drive.) And if you're lucky, the new recovery disks may even include WinXP with Service Pack2. But maybe it's only your Dell disks that are SP1 and the Acer came with SP2 already rolled in?

In any case, however you proceed, make sure you do have WinXP Service Pack2 -- run the Windows updates to get it if necessary and get all other Critical and Security updates for the OS installed promptly as well as updating your antivirus software and any other malware prevention measures you have. I suggest you replace the Win XP firewall with one of the good free ones available for download here at MG. But this is getting into other issues and if you need help on those you can post in the appropriate forums or by continuing this thread if you need to.

Good luck!