XP Won't boot from old HD.

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3y3l3ss

A buddy of mine bought a Dell Optiplex GX150 for $40. They had another, very old dell before it and wanted to use their old hard drive in the new computer. They don't know much about computers so they asked me to do it. Well I hooked everything up and booted up the PC. First it kept saying it couldn't find the primary hard drive. After fooling around with it I finally got it to read it, but when I went to "Start Windows Normally" I got an error screen. The screen came up and went away so quickly though that I couldn't read what it was.

When I went back to the setup, and to the error log, the only thing there was a whole bunch of keyboard errors. So I went back and tried to boot XP in safe mode, got the loading of a whole bunch of drivers, then the computer just rebooted.

Iv tried changing the ribbon, using different power plugs(cant think of the name of them right now). Im at a loss for what to do. Im thinking maybe some drivers arnt right but I don't know how I would get new ones/ install them.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
ROFL! Thats a simple problem. You cant transfer a Hard drive from one computer to another without problems. There is so much infor on that hard drive about the old computers hardware, that the new hardware is unable to load. You will have to do a "Repair" job to have ANY luck getting it back into windows without data loss. Usually a reformat will fix it. Get your information on that HD backed up then reformat the drive when it is connected to the new computer.
 
I don't have a winXP Pro disk to do the repair though. Their friend installed it with his disk and they dont have it. I don't even know how I would reformat the hard drive on their computer. I can't get it to do anything.
 
Well, unless you are able to obtain an XP disk, the hard drive will not work in that computer. When you do a repair job, it erases everything from the windows folder, and reloads the setup. This will detect and install all new hardware. Without it you will have a box that just restarts forever. As far as data backup, you could put it back in the old comp, get all the data off, and then you will be ready for a repair, just in case. Sorry to tell ya :(
 
Yeah I already did a back up by slaving it in my PC. I have an XP home disk but it doesnt detect it in their computer so I can't do a reinstall with it. Thanks for the info though.
 
I took the old CDRom out of their computer, I know it might not work, but I didn't really have any other choice. The PC was used at a security company so it didn't have one. Literally the only thing that I can get it to do is go to a setup menu that only has options to change the Primary, Secondary HDs, and the Diskette Drives. That's it.
 
Well, you will need a cdrom drive...and for the startup/BIOS options, you should be able to scroll down/to different pages and look for "Boot Sequence" or "Order".
 
Ah it has that too, but won't let me into it. The only things I can get into other than the HDs, and Diskette is the error log.
 
Well if you have a home disk, the first thing you need to do is access that Boot Sequence. If you can do that you should be fine. Look in the bios to see if there is an admin password area...
 
Alright. Ill check it out when I get back over there. It's too late now. Ill post back in here with an update when I get back.
 
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