Can't install reimaged disk drive

[DadinITclothing]

Due to SP2 corrupting my machine, I was finally forced to remove the drive, install as a slave to another machine, reinstall XP. It works. But upon removing and reinstalling it back to the orginal machine I can't get it to boot. I confirmed that it still boots on the other machine. BIOS seems okay (recognizes a drive) but the install just beeps once and sits on a flashing cursor. I've tried all apparent variations of cable connections (removed plastic toggle, installed it over master, installed it sideways over master/slave, etc),,,tried 1st pin on loop, 2nd pin, etc. Am I missing something obvious?

 

[iss]

so you installed XP on ANOTHER machine then move the hard drive to a DIFFERENT machine and wonder why it wont boot? when windows installs it lays down the HAL ( hardware application Layer) that is specific to the hardware installed on THAT machine. if you want XP to boot on a particular machine you need to install it on that machine.

 

[DadinITclothing]

new XP image should work on different machine...

The two machines in question are identical PC models. The broken machine was truly broken, thanks to the SP2 maintenance package, to the extent that boot records could not be repaired and I couldn't get the CD to install from the XP CD. I had to save some data and wipe the slate clean. I expected XP to re-install onto this disk in the same fashion as it originally installed. Are you telling me that because I ran the install against the disk in a different machine that this disk image won't be bootable in the original machine? The BIOS should look for boot records in the same spot, no? Does this mean I need to try and re-write the MBR?

 

[iss]

if the two machines are indentical, ( most important that they have the exact same model mobo) then what you did really shouldnt be a problem. how exactly did you try to reinstall XP on the one machine and it failed? the best method is to boot from the XP CD delete the existing partition create a new partition and format that partition and reinstall windows.

 

[poertner_1274]

You can also try putting it into the machine that it will boot to, and remove all the hardware from the device manager. Then turn that machine off and put the HDD into the broken one. Then it might boot past the drivers and such from the other machine and find the rest all new. If that doesn't work I would say there is a problem with your motherboard, or the IDE cables. That might also explain why your CD Rom wasn't working.

BTW
:wave:Welcome to TechSpot:wave:

 

[DadinITclothing]

back to square one.....

well, I spent a whole bunch of time weeks ago trying to get the broken machine fixed before I retreated to moving the drive to another machine so i could save some data from it,,,from there I just re-installled XP. Since I'm not entirely sure what you're recommending with removing all devices from device mgr or how I get them back,,,,It may be simpler to use the XP boot disk process to get back to the point where i might be able to get the XP CD to reinstall to the disk in the broken machine. At least I hope the boot disks allow me to get this far.

Thanks for the insight. :bounce: