Latitude c540 boot issue

Hello, this is my first time on the Dell thread, as I mostly use a Panasonic. Two weeks ago,I bought a Dell Latitude C540 laptop at an auction, got a good deal on it, when I turned it on, it had windows XP on it, but only a nfew programs like media player, internet explorer and some kind of other stuff I wasn't sure what it was. I could not access any programs due to some "restrictions", so I removed the hard drive and loaded windows xp again by putting it in another laptop. When I reinstalled the hard drive to the Dell, I couldn't get past some message mentioning invalid configuration, and it seems it has a managed boot program, probably from whatever company hads owned it before. I researched this managed boot thing, and read that installing the updated bios would fix it, I was able to download the bios ond put it to disk, but this laptop has no floppy drive or cd/dvd, just an extra battery in the media bay. Just what can I do to make this thing useable? it is in good shape, batteries are good etc. Please help!

Thanks,

-DDaymen

 

So the hard drive you put in it had XP installed from another computer? If so then that won't work. When you install Windows it remembers what chipset and other drivers to load, so if you put it in a computer with different hardware, it will give errors when the old drivers don't load. You should really do a fresh install. You should really buy a CD/DVD drive off ebay for a C-series latitude to install windows and anything else you might have on CD. It shouldn't cost too much. Hope this is what you were looking for!

 

Did just that yesterday, bought a cd drive, and a floppy drive off of ebay, around $30.00 for both. But would that managed boot stuff prevent me from setting it to boot from a cd? the options show up in setup, but would it do it?
I guess I will find out as soon as the drives get here.

Thanks,

-DDaymen

 

Well, when you first boot it up, push F12 and see if the one-time boot menu comes up. That's a really old laptop, so I might be wrong with that specific key. I'm pretty sure F2 lets you get into BIOS setup. If neither work, then I really have no idea

 

Okay, got in the cd/dvd drive, used it to load windows xp, worked out okay, except the cd I used was for another dell laptop, so there are a few issues, like slow response, etc. I wonder if a generic version of xp would load on it, and I could download the individual drivers if needed?

Thanks,
-DDaymen

 

Loaded a non-proprietary version of xp, works like a champ!