Problem Installing New Hard Drive

Hello, I have a Dell Demension 4700 and my existing HD failed SATA Western Digital WD800. I purchased a new one from New Egg Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. When I went to install I put the original Operating System disk in and it appeared that everything was going well until the computer said that it could not load the data on to the partition. The partition was the only one that came up when the question was asked during setup. Anyway, it said to check to see if there was power to the HD or if the HD was a SCSI drive. Anyway, I exited out of setup and checked the connections and everything seemed fine. However, this time when I put the computer on I received the message "Error loading operating System" Any assistance would be appreciated.

Phil

 

Are you set to boot from disk when you get the error loading os message? It sounds like it's trying to boot from the drive.

When you set up partitions, the partition you want to install the os to has to be large enough to hold the os. I usually set aside ~10 gig to install xp, tho that is more than necessary. I have no idea how much room vista needs, tho it should give a min space req at the partition step. I have had the same problem before when trying to install on too small a partition.

Hope that helps, that was the first bit of info that came to mind when I read your post.