[Ptera Dactyl]

hi!
ok so my mom's computer runs a not-so-authorized copy of xp, and for the past month or so it has that screen that microsoft asks that you verify your copy "for update purposes". i've always clicked cancel and moved along, and advised her to do the same. today, however, i was mid downloading some episodes of degrassi, and it just crashed. it restarted, got all the way to the windows loading screen, then would crash every time it hit 3 bars. then it rebooted to the black safe mode screen. i tried every option, but it just did the same thing. this happened about 15 times before i realized that it wasn't going to stop. i searched around and i read that that might be attributed to her lack of "real" windows.

but that's not even the problem

i'd been planning to put ubuntu on there for her anyway. but i have a netbook with no cd drive. so i broke apart an old computer and put my old drive into an external harddrive box thing (what you put an internal harddrive into to make it external), and thought i'd be all set. i plugged it into my netbook, and it recognizes it, but i can't do anything with it. it's not in "my computer" and that pop up notification doesn't take me anywhere when clicking it. can anyone figure something?

thanks in advance

[Advertisements]

Hi Ptera Dactyl,
Welcome to Geeks To Go.

As far as your grandmothers computer, I would suggest downloading Ubuntu, burning it to a disk and running it. You could use the CD's tools to test some possible hardware issues you may be having.

As for you notebook, click Start, then Control Panel. Open Administrative tools then click on Computer Managment.
In the new window, scroll down to Disk Management and look for your hard drive.
Check to see if a drive letter is present for that drive and if the drive is mounted. (You use the right click options).

[sarahw]

Hi Ptera Dactyl,
Welcome to Geeks To Go.

As far as your grandmothers computer, I would suggest downloading Ubuntu, burning it to a disk and running it. You could use the CD's tools to test some possible hardware issues you may be having.

As for you notebook, click Start, then Control Panel. Open Administrative tools then click on Computer Managment.
In the new window, scroll down to Disk Management and look for your hard drive.
Check to see if a drive letter is present for that drive and if the drive is mounted. (You use the right click options).

[Ptera Dactyl]

Hi Ptera Dactyl,
Welcome to Geeks To Go.

As far as your grandmothers computer, I would suggest downloading Ubuntu, burning it to a disk and running it. You could use the CD's tools to test some possible hardware issues you may be having.

As for you notebook, click Start, then Control Panel. Open Administrative tools then click on Computer Managment.
In the new window, scroll down to Disk Management and look for your hard drive.
Check to see if a drive letter is present for that drive and if the drive is mounted. (You use the right click options).

yeah that's what i tried last night. it was in the drive list, but it was a bunch of random symbols, and not a name. iread somewhere that i should uninstall and then reinstall the drivers, but now that i've uninstalled i can't find where i can get the driver again

[sarahw]

Is there a drive letter assigned to the hard drive?

Click Start, then Run and type CMD and press enter
switch to that drive letter, if the drive is D:, type D: and press enter.

Come back here and tell me if you can access the drive that way.

Also, do you get any errors when switching to that drive.

Edited by sarahw, 21 October 2009 - 10:48 AM.

[Ptera Dactyl]

do you mean in "my computer" or in the drive manager area? it's in neither.... and yeah, i've checked, and double checked that everything was plugged in

[sarahw]

Any drivers should be on the manufacturers website.

When you look in computer management, the box with your hard drive has a blue border? What is the color of the external drive? When you click the external drive, what options do you see?

Have you tried it in another computer?