Upgrading hard drive on dell inspiron 1501

I just upgraded my hard drive from 120gb to 250gb and now it is not allowing me to install windows 7.

Do I need to change anything in the BIOS?


I am installing from a USB drive. The drive is okay because it works in another laptop.

Maybe I got a bad hard drive.


Opinions

You will need to contact either Dell or Microsoft to figure out your license for win7 (I'd say call up dell first)

an OEM lincense, which is what dell typically uses, limits your windows installation only to your computer. However, the way it keeps track of whether this is your machine or not is by remembering the system configuration of your hardware. So, when you changed the hard drive the system configuration changed, which is why it is not letting you install windows on it.

"hdd had a password on it", I'm curious to know where that password was stored... since I don't know that I cannot judge whether this password could be the cause of your issue.

anyhow, if you have a fresh copy of win7 retail that shouldn't present a problem.

when the computer boots up, go into BIOS and check that your new HDD is recognized.

if not, check what the drive mode set to IDE or AHCI, you might have to switch this parameter for HDD to be recognized properly.