Hard Drive Question

[rhan]

My laptop crashed recetly and I know it's a hard drive problem. Now I'm about to buy a new hard drive for it. The hard drives I see for the specific model I have can only be bought off the internet. They all say that this is a OEM. So that means they won't come installed with an operating system correct? So I'll have to manually install a operating system and whatnot to the laptop. I have a operation disc and about 6 other discs that came with the laptop.

Agh. Sorry if this isn't very informational. I'm not really computer savvy. Any help will be nice. If you don't get any of the above then just answer this question.

How do I install operating systems to a OEM hard drive? The laptop model is a HP Pavillion ZE 5400. It was made in 2003. Hope that helps a little.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Zolga Owns]

Click

I don't really have experience in this so I would say use our handy dandy search engine...GOOGLE! :D

 

[Kirby King]

OEM doesn't mean it won't come with an operating system; no hard drive you buy will come with an operating system. (Okay, well, no hard drive you buy alone, like in a box, anyway--so I'll exclude ones that come in computers. Literalist.) Here's the relevant definition, courtesy Wikipedia:

OEM hardware is hardware packaged for computer administrator and builder use. These products are normally plain boxed and often don't come with any instructions or references provided in retail packages. Technical support for such "OEM products" is usually the responsibility of the reseller, rather than of the manufacturer.

Installing an operating system is easy, provided you have the installation media. Assuming you want to install Windows, this means taking your Windows CD (hopefully your computer came with one) and putting it in your computer with the new hard drive installed, and starting it up. If you need to press a key to boot from CD, do that, and the Windows installer should take over and walk you through the rest of the process....

 

[rhan]

OEM doesn't mean it won't come with an operating system; no hard drive you buy will come with an operating system. (Okay, well, no hard drive you buy alone, like in a box, anyway--so I'll exclude ones that come in computers. Literalist.) Here's the relevant definition, courtesy Wikipedia:

Installing an operating system is easy, provided you have the installation media. Assuming you want to install Windows, this means taking your Windows CD (hopefully your computer came with one) and putting it in your computer with the new hard drive installed, and starting it up. If you need to press a key to boot from CD, do that, and the Windows installer should take over and walk you through the rest of the process....

Yeah I have a operating system disc and 6 system recovery discs. Thanks for clearing this up. The google searches I have done make the process seem more complicated then how you sumed it up.

Thanks again so very much for the info.