[marocg]

i have a dell d420 which i think the hard drive has been erased. i plugged in a cd drive and inserted a vista cd. then it asks for some drivers which i dont kno what to do for here. i tryed downloading i bunch of drives from the dell website but none seem to work. CAN ANYONE HELP!

[joeten]

Hi and welcome to TSG when did you put the disc in,was vista the original operating system

[marocg]

no it was xp befor but everything has been erased it has no opperating system at the momement

[marocg]

Can u help ?
Pleaseeee

[flavallee]

What's the service tag number on the sticker of that Dell D420?

What do you mean by I plugged in a CD drive and inserted a Vista CD? I'm not sure exactly what you did. Were you trying to upgrade from XP to Vista?

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[marocg]

it has no operating system as the previous owner erased everything.so i inserted a cd drive and vista cd to reinstall windows in this case vista

[marocg]

now it says my drive can be accessed for the installation to take place so it asking me for some sort of driver ???

[flavallee]

That computer is a laptop and is a Dell Latitude D420, correct?

What's the service tag number on the sticker?

Is the CD drive in it working?

Is the CD an actual Vista CD, is it an upgrade version or a full version, and is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

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[marocg]

yes its dell lattitude d420 and i dont know the service tag

[flavallee]

Originally Posted by marocg

yes its dell lattitude d420 and i dont know the service tag

Open your eyes wide and read it off the sticker on the bottom of the laptop case. It should be a combination of 7 numbers and letters.

And answer the rest of my questions in post #8.

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[marocg]

g34hg2j is the service tag

and the problem is that the hard drive cant be found for some reason and asks for some sort of driver

the cd drive is working and its external and the cd is full and 32 bit

[flavallee]

According to service tag number G34HG2J, here is the Dell support and software site that's specific to that Dell Latitude D420 laptop.

Here is the list of Vista 32-bit drivers for the devices in that laptop.

Here is the audio(sound) driver.

Here is the graphics(video) driver.

Here is the wireless network adapter driver.

Here is the wired network adapter driver.

You need to download and save all these drivers and then burn them off to a CD-R. If the install of Vista 32-bit doesn't install all the drivers, you can then install the ones your laptop needs from the CD-R.

Here is a pictorial guide on how to do a fresh install of Vista 32-bit.

You classify yourself as a beginner, so you're going to need help from a knowledgeable person to assist you.

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[marocg]

my hard drive doesnt come up though thats the problem

[Elvandil]

Have you tried reinstalling XP from the recovery partition? It may well still be there.

If some sort of "wiper" was used on the drive, it may have no MBR and will not be detected as a drive.

[flavallee]

Insert the Vista CD in its drive, then completely shut down by holding down the power button until all the lights go out.

Wait at least 30 seconds, then press the power button to restart.

What happens?

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Elvandil is much more of a hardware expert than I am.

I've thrown in my 2 cents worth and am removing myself from this thread.

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