New hard drive, more trouble

Chuck B

Posts: 14   +0
Although my tests (SMART) on my internal HP desktop hard drive indicated no trouble, the drive died on me. I started using LINUX to get online. I bought a couple of drives for a great price, and figured Trouble was over.

well, I was soon proved wrong. I got an external USB drive. I figured I could restore WINDOWS XP to that and get back to work. Nope. Won't accept installation on a USB drive. If linux can detect the hard drive, why not Windows? I found several "fixes", but none of them work.

I do NOT have a "Boot disk", I do have a recovery set. I have tried about 10 fixes I've seen on the web. I either get "Boot manager missing", one of a half dozen 0x???? errors, or BCD error.

NOW, I find my BASE_25.inp is bad, too. But even that, I still need to get this d*** computer started!

I can't get the CD/DVD drive to recognize some disks, If I try cloning I get a "Bootmgr" error.

This is the same computer I wrote about earlier. HP 1410E, 2Gig Mem, USB ports, CD, even floppy (Although none of my floppies are recognized anymore, just too old)

So, assuming I get the BASE_25.INP to work, HOW do I install to a USB HD (500GB, Toshiba) so I can boot the program and use the computer?

BTW: If you tried to answer my "Boot.ini" error message, Thanks. Nothing worked.
 
Do you have, or can you borrow an XP install disc and install it from the CD drive or an external USB CD/DVD drive?
 
Unfortunately, I know of nobody in this area with an install disk, and it would do no good -- WINDOWS does not recognize an EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVE as a hard drive, at all. What I need is a way to install WIN XP to an external Hard drive (USB). If I try with my recovery disks, it tells me to unplug "Personal external storage devices" -- but when I do that, there's no H/D, and it won't install!
 
I CAN boot from a USB device, both flash drive and hard drive, PROVIDED it is Linux that is booting. The problem seems to be Windows (Or as I sometimes less affectionately write it, "Win-doze). The files are just not designed to allow a USB installation. And sadly restoration files are "Computer specific." I tried to install my old recovery versions (Licensed, mind you!) of WIN 95 and WIN 98 on the USB drive, but the message received says they must be installed on a specific type of computer.

My old H/D is definitely spinning: I can feel it. but it is not seen by BIOS, leading me to conclude that the circuit board is shot. But finding that type of circuit board is difficult and expensive at best.
 
The reason Linux finds the hard drive is because your Windows recovery set is no longer usable, and it may be corrupt itself. You can probably find a motherboard on EBay, but because of this laptops age and lack of real available upgrades, it is not worth putting any more $ into it
 
Ummm. that really makes no sense. Linux sees the hard drive on both the laptop and the desktop (And I've been talking about the desktop). Interestingly, the WIN-DOZE thing I tried differently, just as a test. I cloned my LAPTOP drive to the external, and tried to book the laptop from the external. I get to the main screen (Before the welcome screen) and then the computer reboots, so I can't get into safe mode. I get an error 0xc000000f "Device inaccessible" when I try to recover. That might be because there is no recovery partition. IF I try to boot WIN 7 from external HD, I get a black screen with the options to reboot or start normally, but if I start normally I get to the starting screen (not the welcome screen) then it reboots.

So, let's rephrase the question one more time -- When I try to install Windows XP to an external HD, I can't get it to take, and I'm looking for a workaround. IS there such a thing?

This isn't a Hard disk problem from what I can tell. I can boot Linux from a second partition, but not install windows on the first partition -- at least not so it boots!
 
You are the one making this harder. "This is the same computer I wrote about earlier. HP 1410E" This is a laptop right???? It won't boot from external drive, either CD or hard drive?
 
Ok, let's put some definitions up:
Laptop is a COMPAQ -- it works.
DESKTOP is the HP, the one that lost the H/D. The desktop used a Seagate drive, ATA, 160 Gig.
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IF I try to install Windows (XP or 7, it makes no difference) to the Toshiba external (A usb hard drive) the program aborts. It tells me to remove "Personal external storage devices." This happens in both computers. But I have no internal drive in the Desktop -- apparently it will only let me install to an Internal drive.

When I cloned the functioning internal drive and tried to boot from the external (the clone of the functional drive), it gives me an error and either reboots endlessly or if I try repairing with the tools on the disks, I get a "Device not available" error, 0xc00000f.

I have licensed versions of Win 95, 98 , XP, and 7, I try to install 98 on the HP but it tells me it can "Only be installed on an HP" -- which is kind of dumb since the Desktop is an HP. Therefore, I suspect this is "computer specific software." -- it came with the computer.

The question still remains -- how can I get Windows (Either XP or 7) to install to this hard disk when the computer is told by Windows that it won't take an external drive?

Maybe all I can do is get an internal...I dislike that, but it may be my only option.
 
I did. And after 2 weeks of trying to get my recovery of Windows XP on an External USB to get my Desktop running again, I have determined that anyone who says that they have done something similar is lying. There is simply no way it can be done. Windows demands that all "External devices" be unplugged. This simple forced the issue to an internal drive. Since I cannot afford an internal drive, I will only be able to power the desktop by linux.

I tried setup floppies, they failed because the file is just too large for the disk. If I burn the ISO, it doesn't get read by the DVD/CD drive. When I adjust the files for set up, it doesn't work.

I have no way to do floppies on my laptop. I cannot get the optical drive to work properly on the Desktop or at least not with disks burned by a different computer. I don't have what I need to access the drives on the desktop via the laptop...there seems to be no way to set up a LAN with only an Ethernet cable. Cloning the HD from the laptop results in an error of continuous rebooting.

Conclusion: This is something that cannot be done. Not by a professional, and certainly not by an amateur. Topic over. Thanks for trying, anyway.
 
That PC or it's motherboard may be too old, and the bios has no options to boot from an external device. I don't even build computers with floppy drives any longer. It has been many years. I have a external USB Optical CD /DVD RAM drive that I use, when the computers I work on have no optical drive, or a bad optical drive. I doesn't surprise me that a OS Boot hard drive created on another computer gives you problems
 
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