Rebuilding a computer and finding the lost city of Atlantis

splash

I had a 7 year old Dell Dimenion 4100 and now it's being used by my brother. Surprisingly it runs pretty well for what it is, Dell used to be a good company. I might get some 3-4 year old components from my friend and I'm eager to see what I can do to rebuild it for my brother's birthday this month.

While I was on the old computer today to make sure about reformatting and things it came to fruition that for 3-4 years I had Windows ME but everything had been covered up when I installed XP. Back then I didn't understand that would happen. I easily forgot about it. So at this point I can't really remember what I had and being able to recover it would be like discovering the lost city of Atlantis for me. There must be a lot of interesting stuff. Is there any way to do this pretty easily?

After that's done, I won't be changing the motherboard but perhaps replacing the CPU, hard drive, power supply, and already did a CD/DVD burn drive. It's an OEM copy of Windows XP, is that going to be okay? How does it work to re-register, do you have to do anything? Also I had a slight worry about drivers for the new components and whether I need any of the stuff Dell pre-installed. Since it was probably created by Dell in 2000 is it safe to assume all the new components will... have basic functionality if I go right to installing XP? The CD/DVD drive seems to work good. I really don't want to have to install ME first than XP.

Thanks!

Dark Moon

Your second paragraph makes no sense - please clarify.

To your third paragraph - You might be able to install an OEM version of XP. There are two types of OEM versions - ones locked to a specific computer and generic OEM. The latter options should let you install on any machine, while the former can only be installed on a particular machine to whose BIOS the disk has been locked. If it's an XP install disc that came bundled with a PC from a major manufacturer, chances are it's locked, but the only sure way is to try.

For drivers, it should run. You will, however, have to go on a driver hunt to restore full functionality. I'd advise you do that before reformatting and whatnot, as doing it at a proper resolution on a properly functioning machine is far better than not being able to do it after reformatting/reinstalling Windows because your network card no longer has functional drivers. That's a choice I'll leave up to you.

Malkor

I doubt you'd be able to find a new CPU for a 7 year old motherboard. You might have luck on E-bay, but then you have to worry about what the previous owner did to it. From what I can glean from your second paragraph, you installed XP over your ME installation but didn't reformat right? Everything on the HD should still be there if you poke around a bit.

ronzo

I did a rebuild of a old dell 4100 about 2 years ago now. These machine were fucking resilient. Unfortunatly, I went to the site that i bought my new CPU from (they had the best pentium III's that the existed that the 4100's motherboard could still use, old 1.4 ghz server chips), but sadly they stopped selling them early this year. Here's the site to look at

As for power supplies, i went with this after market one that worked pretty well and isnt too expensive = Link

As for hard drives, anything ATA will work, I just got a quiet 120GB 7200 drive.

So, by the end of the rebuild I had a machine that ran about 1.2 Ghz, 512mb of RAM, 120 gig drive, radeon 9250 pci card and the only part still factory was the motherboard. Ran old stuff great, and ran stuff like EvE, WoW, homeworld 2 decently

splash

Oops sorry for some unclarity I've been in a sleep state this week. So I installed XP over ME without reformatting. The funny thing is that everything dissapeared without a trace. None of the folders, even ones I had created, remained.

Ronzo do you happen to know if the Dell Dimension 4100 is locked like Dark Moon said? I know when I boot up the BIOS it doesn't really let me configure anything = must be locked?

My friend's computer has a broken motherboard and I'm buying parts off him. The CPU still works (3 year old computer) and I'll do the research but I was hoping to put that one in my 7-year old computer. Similarly, the same with the HDD and power supply I can get from him. Right now I figure they are both Dell but separated by about 3 years of technology because his is a miniATX or similar. I found out today it's a Dimension 4600C. I kind of made it unclear because I didn't say first I'm going to combine the best parts for my friend between his broken motherboard Dimension 4600C and Dimension 4700 he got from a relative, and then I get the left-over parts.

Thank you for your advice.

ronzo

the best CPU that will work with a 4100 is the last model tulatin Pentium III's i think, and even then you needed a socket adapter (maybe, its been awhile so I could be wrong)

Yeah, you'll probably have to flash your bios. I had to flash mine to a intel one for the new CPU, and that was probably the hardest/scariest part of the whole thing. One wrong move and bam, motherboard is not coming back

splash

I'll have to rethink some of the more complicated procedures. I like learning by doing (with a lot of research beforehand) but since it's my brother's computer now I can't afford to take many risks.