Help with Dell Dimension XPS 8500 desktop system

[Computernerd22]

Hello fellow members of AO. I have a Dell Dimension XPS 8500 with Windows 8 desktop. 5 days ago, my system was "supposedly" hit by lighting, when I was out of town. The system shows the "DELL" logo and it displays "Automatic Repair" then goes to a black screen. The system is plugged into a backup power supply unit.. Anyways,


I ran a Dell diagnostics on the entire system and a red X showed up next to hard drive only. However, in the BIOS it detects the faulty hard drive. I took out the faulty hard drive and I installed it in another system. It detects in the BIOS but hard drive does nothing.


I purchased a Seagate 1TB hard drive from Best Buy today for 75 bucks (same one that was in my Dell) , I created a Bootable thumb drive from another system running windows 8 same make and model system. I installed new hard drive, placed thumb drive in USB port and nothing I changed boot sequence to boot from thumb drive first. My system didn't come with any cd's (recovery disks/driver disk or any OS cd's) i need to get windows 8 installed on my new hard drive, however, I don't have a windows 8 disk. Again, I created a bootable thumb drive with windows 8 (takes 16gb to do it) but didn't work.


My questions are #1. How can I get Windows 8 installed on my new empty hard drive if I don't have a windows 8 cd? I don't wanna go out and buy Windows 8 software (money is kind of tight at the moment) #2 I just ordered Dell recovery disks for free through Dell a couple of days ago they should be here either today or tomorrow. Also, my warranty expired 2 months ago, they can't help me unless I buy an extended Dell warranty (im not doing that) Will the Dell disks fix this issue? What other options do I have? Thanks, Mike.

[Shay]

The Dell disk should take care of things.by resetting it back to factory.

Dell backup and recovery
http://www.dell.com/support/contents...p-and-Recovery

Since they no long send the disks with the computers, they install a program to make them.

[Computernerd22]

Thank you, Shay for the reply. I received the disks earlier today, disk drivers, and OEM OS version of Windows 8. I installed windows 8 not a problem. However, in the boot sequence in the BIOS it doesn't have an option to boot from CD.

Anyways, I installed Windows 8 it's up and running like new, I also installed medisoft v18 in the Cape Coral office the server is in fort myers (15 mile awaY) I did a remote desktop connection to the server, logged in open medisoft and restore all patient data. Co-workers, doctors very happy. Thanks again, for all your help.

[Shay]

Good news indeed. Thanks for posting back.