Confused / Scared with my new HD in 5672

OK so here's my deal. I have a 5672WLMI and decided to replace the 120hd with a SATA 320gb cause its..well...bigger. I put in the new hd and my friend convinced me to put on a clean version of xp that he had burned with sp2. It worked and everything was fine, except I couldn't do any windows updates because the serial was bad. After about an hour I decided to just use my recovery discs that came with the comp.

I didn't format before using the recovery, i literally just booted up wih the disc in and tried. I got an error message and couldn't get it to copy the recovery files. I ALSO couldn't get it to boot back to the sp2 version of windows that was on the hd. AND I couldn't use that sp2 disc and format. The whole hd went gonzo! When I tried to conect the hd t my desktop it couldn't recognize it, and linux also couldn't see the drive. It was like I permanently corrupted the thing. I read in some forums when I googled the error message which I can't remember now that people were saying it was linked to bad ram, only i know my ram is god since it works fine on my original hd and when i did the regular install.

This is where its completely over my head. I took the hd back and got a new one and am now running the sp2 but its definitely buggy. I want to use my recovery discs but am worried it wasn't a fluke error and will happen again.

My theories are (and keep in mind I know nothing about computers)

1) I should have formatted the sp2 xp off the drive BEFORE using the recovery discs

2) I should use the recovery discs from the moment I get the hd before its been formatted or anything

3) I should use Norton Ghost to clone my C drive from the 120 onto the 35 gig partition on the new 320.

4) I go buy an xp disc and just go looking for all the drivers / borrow a xp disc from someone and use the serial that came with my laptop

Any help and advise is GREATLY appreciated.

 

You have a valid product key, use it. Borrow a current XP SP2 CD and key in your product code, that way you can get the updates. The recovery disks are pretty much useless in my eyes. Depending on what you are trying to do you can use the Windows disk to boot up and diagnose or repair Windows.

Do a fresh install, I reinstall Windows annually just to clean up the hard drive and return to blistering speed. You would not believe how slow it ran from all the programs I had installed and supposedly removed.

Well thats just my opinion but hopefully it helped you in some way.

 

Thanks for that TravisA, thats what I probably will end up doing. Do you have any clue what could have done that to my hd though? I'm still curious what would cause that

 

If it was just the OSes that could not see the drive, it's likely the MFT was corrupted when you tried using the Recovery CD. Now, if the BIOS couldn't see your hard drive, then something glitched at the hardware level with the hard drive (most likely a fluke). I don't really know how a hard drive and a motherboard interface at the lowest level though.