Hard Drive Recognition

[Dr_Seuss]

I have a problem....i will try to explain the best i can.

i recently had a computer die on me due to a power surge so i bought a new one and replaced the new hard drive with the old one so i didnt lose any of my data...it works perfectly.
my wife has a computer which has recently had a virus which has left it in a bad way..so i decided to switch her hard drive with the one i got with the new computer (preloaded with Windows XP) and transfer her documents and stuff across.
THE PROBLEM: her computer starts to load windows from the new hard drive then crashes. despite the new hard drive working perfectly (i tested it in my new machine)

is there something im overlooking...some small setting which is making me slowly lose my mind???

please can anyone help? feel free to ask if you need any more information and i will try to supply it the best i can

 

[jdillman1502]

Typically you cannot just take a drive out of one pc and put it in another and have it work. You got lucky when your old drive just worked in your new pc. The problem is probably that her pc has hardware that is much different from the hardware on your new pc. So the drive that came with your new pc has drivers installed for the hardware that is in your new pc. In order to get the drive to work in her pc, you would have to boot from the windows xp cd and repair the installation on the drive.