Stupidly Switching Hard Drive

[hmacfarl]

Help needed!

I had 2 Dell Latitude C610 and between the 2 only one decent computer (one good hard drive and one good hard ware). So I loaded all the data onto the good hard drive and removed both hard drives and swapped them so all the good components were together. This was a silly thing to do.

Now when I start both up the option for start normally, safe mode etc. comes up and in all start up modes a blue screen appears and disappears before I can read it. Is this fixable by myself or have I ruined 2 perfectly OK computers in one foul swoop?

 

[B00kWyrm]

This should be fixable, but may require some time... several steps...
For a 6-year old laptop... you gotta ask yourself... is it worth it?

Still, my guess, at this point, is that it should be fixable.

First step... Questions...
1. How did you determine that the drive was bad on one, and the "hardware" bad on the other...
Specifically what hardware was bad?

2. Do you have the restore cds (or original OS disks) that came with the computers?
If not, we may have problems unless you wish to purchase an xp pro from someplace like Micro Center.
(your original OS was xp pro, yes?)
If you have another os such as 2k that you could migrate, this too could be an option.

Step two... go into your bios, on both, and set up to boot first from the cd...

On the one that has the data you wish to save... turn it off and wait.

On the other... attempt to follow the prompts for a restore installation.
If it fails, swap the drives (again). and try the same on the other computer...
again saving the other drive (that has the data you want to save) for later.

What results exactly from following these steps?