Having problems reinstalling vista on new hardrive?

Question

Dell Inspiron 1520 (about 4 years old)
WD SATA hardrive (new)
Portable multi drive (new external optical drive)
Reinstallation dvd windows vista

Ive reinstalled vista on a new hardrive easily once before about 2 years ago on this laptop.Had problems this time,exchanged new hardrive just in case it was bad and then Geek Sqaud said my optical drive was out and that I could reinstall using an external optical drive.Hooked up portable drive,installed new hd and still cant get it to reinstall.I have cd/dvd as my only boot device in BIOS.I get the same message as I did with 1st hd and before using external op drive:
No boot sector on internal hardrive
No bootable devices--strike f1 to retry boot,f2 for setup utility
press f5 to run onboard diagnostics

Answer 1

When it boots from the Cd do you see the message " press any key to boot from CD,,"



If not then the external drive isnt being seen as a bootable device..



or the disk itself has failed and isnt bootable

Answer 2

you ought to do a reinstall of it. in truth a production facility restore. which will make it like its clean from the production facility. besides the actual undeniable actuality that I have domicile windows 7, i imagine the technique must be similar. click the domicile button and sort administration panel into the search menu. click the icon. click backup and restore center. pick to fix your operating device utilising device restore. keep on with the teachings. and no matter if you're taking each and each of the classes off. there'll nonetheless be your suggestion on there. in case you do it the above way, it will be clean on the interior. no longer some thing of yours left over. no longer some thing!

Answer 3

Secure Erase it before installing windows again using Parted Magic and a bootable CD.



Parted Magic download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/partedmagic/files/partedmagic/Parted%20Magic%202011_12_30/pmagic_2011_12_30.iso/download