Can it Be Done?

[Cathy Davis]

Hi....I'm not exactly a newbie at computers, but I have done more software than hardware. I am fixing a friends computer....it had 18 trojans on it, causing it major problems. The decision was made to format the computer and reinstall OS. While formatting, the computer reported bad clusters on the hard drive and repeated attempts to reinstall OS has been nothing but trouble (continuous reboots, blue screens, etc.) I have an old hard drive that my son took out of his computer and gave to me and I want to know IF and HOW I could go about putting it in instead.
Thanks for any help given.

[rbc1100]

They can be changed out if both drives are SATA or IDE. If your mother board supports both. If it is an ide drive then you can replace it with a ide drive, the same goes for sata. Most new mainboards support both. Look inside you tower and see what kind of cables are installed from your drive to the mainboard. IDE drive will have a ribbon cable and SATA drives will have a cable about 1/2" wide running to the board. Just unplug the the power cable and ribbon cable ( make sure computer is off and unplugged ) set your drive up as master and install it. I know my reply is vague, if you need more help please post again.

[Cathy Davis]

Thanks rbc.....they are both IDE and I made sure the jumper was set to Master, but when I installed it, the only thing the Bios said was that it was 80 Gbytes.....not the other info about it......and it won't boot up.....now what?

[bistro]

Was this hard drive from your son's computer a secondary drive or a primary drive? If the former, then it may not be bootable. If the latter, then it is possible that it has not been selected as the boot drive in the BIOS. Go into the BIOS and look under the menu titled "Advanced Bios Features" (or something similar). You should see an option for Hard Disk Boot Priority. Go in there and make sure the 80 gig drive is selected as the boot drive (#1 position). Then go to the entry First Boot Device and select that drive. Be sure to press F10 and then Y to save the settings. Now be prepared for some rock and roll because you are installing on a what I assume is a completely new system...Windows may or may not cooperate and adjust for the new hardware. Cross your fingers. I also assume this is Windows XP. If so, it should be more forgiving than Vista.
If the drive will not boot up after making the BIOS changes, then it's likely not bootable. You will then have to set the BIOS to boot from a CD and use a Windows installation CD to install the OS from scratch (which probably would be the way of less headache for you).

[Cathy Davis]

hi Bistro,
No....it was the ONLY hard drive in my sons computer so it must be a primary, and it had WinXP.
The computer I want to put it in is an older computer that I'm fixing for a friend.....it had WinME on it before I formatted it......does that change anything?

[Cathy Davis]

excuse me, I didn't finish before hitting 'send'....
The hard drive that had win ME on it reported bad clusters and sections and won't let me have a decent install....thats why I want to use the hard drive from my sons computer in it instead.

[Tuttle]

Windows XP doesn't like being transplanted across machines; you won't get the OS install on that hard drive to boot. You should be able to boot from the Windows Me CD and format the drive to reinstall though.

[lgbpop]

If you clear the ESCD (system configuration data) in the BIOS before trying to boot the 80GB XP drive, it may work right away but you'll have to install a lot of device drivers to complete the deal. You could do a clean install as an easier alternative.

My biggest concern would be the hardware compatiblity between the ME computer and the XP operating system. XP will run on 512MB but it'll be slow; it'll be a slug on 256MB, which was the average RAM capacity of a typical computer built when ME was the latest thing. The CPU will also be a concern, but less so as long as it's 900MHz or faster. Be prepared to entertain a RAM upgrade (if possible).