[boweasel]

I must be doing something wrong....

I have an old XP Home machine that will occassionally boot up, but I never seem to get any further than the logon screen before the monitor goes dark. I have no idea what the problem is, but it does the same thing if I select safe mode or last good configuration.

So I have another XP Home PC and I figure it should be a snap to connect the old hard drive to this PC. Now I have no idea how important it is to actually 'install' the drive on the working PC, but I didn't want to go to the trouble of completely removing the new drive and screwing in the old one. So I removed the old drive, carefully set it on the newer PC's chassis, unhooked the new HD and connected the old one. I just goes into a boot loop - I never actually get the welcome screen...

But I noticed the the new HD has a jumper in position 1, just to the left of the power. The old HD had no jumper. Both of them are Western Digital. So I try the old one with the jumper in pos. 1 - same result... a boot loop.

Then I reconnect the new HD, move the jumper from the old HD to the slave position, connect the old HD using the second data connector on the IDE cable and the second power plug. No jumper on the new HD at all. I get a "media test failure check cable" message.

I put the jumper back into the original spot on the new HD, and reboot... another perpetual loop.

I put another jumper (at least I think it's a jumper - I've got 2 of them - they're the right size, but one has thin white and green wires running from it to a small clear plastic nipple. The other has the same look, but the wires are green and white. Another perpetual loop.

I unhook everything, and reboot the working PC, with the new HD and the jumper - just to make sure THAT still works. It does...

I try the old HD in the old PC. Once again it starts to boot, and then goes black.

I REALLY need data off the old HD.

Now I HAVE seen other people simply pick up a hard drive, connect to another PC without actually screwing it in, and they seem to be able to get it to work in under a minute. I've been playing with this all day, and have gotten nowhere.

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You're trying way too hard to get this working. I am assuming this computer has 2 IDE connections on the motherboard.
Here's 2 IDE HD-CDROM connectors and a floppy drive connector.


You should have the HD connected to one of the IDE connectors with a cable that has 2 connectors on it. The other IDE connector should have the cdrom drives connected to it. It does not matter what combination of the connections to the IDE connectors are, but you need one of the connectors on the cable open so you can connect the hard drive into the computer.

On some computers( compaq's for example)you must have the drive you install in the computer set as a slave drive. Depending on the make of the drive you set a single jumper to the slave setting on the hard drive itself.

Heres the pins on a IDE drive.




Here for example this is the Western Digital settings for IDE drives.


Notice the top row(for 3.5 inch drives) shows the slave setting as the 2nd pins from the right side. You may have to set the jumper to these pins for it to work in your system.

Usually WD has no jumpers to use "cable select" for drives.Cable select is nothing more than the end connector is for the master drive and the middle connector is the slave on the cable itself. But as i said some computers do not use this.

Once you set the jumper and the drive is installed in the computer you should be able to go thru windows explorer and see the drive. Use explorer to copy files off the drive to the HD that was already in the computer. If you cannot then something is wrong with the drive. It sounds like you are getting bad sectors and everytime XP boots it finds and disregards the new bad sectors it finds. Pretty soon the drive will have too many bad sectors and just quit working entirely.

SRX660

[SRX660]

You're trying way too hard to get this working. I am assuming this computer has 2 IDE connections on the motherboard.
Here's 2 IDE HD-CDROM connectors and a floppy drive connector.


You should have the HD connected to one of the IDE connectors with a cable that has 2 connectors on it. The other IDE connector should have the cdrom drives connected to it. It does not matter what combination of the connections to the IDE connectors are, but you need one of the connectors on the cable open so you can connect the hard drive into the computer.

On some computers( compaq's for example)you must have the drive you install in the computer set as a slave drive. Depending on the make of the drive you set a single jumper to the slave setting on the hard drive itself.

Heres the pins on a IDE drive.




Here for example this is the Western Digital settings for IDE drives.


Notice the top row(for 3.5 inch drives) shows the slave setting as the 2nd pins from the right side. You may have to set the jumper to these pins for it to work in your system.

Usually WD has no jumpers to use "cable select" for drives.Cable select is nothing more than the end connector is for the master drive and the middle connector is the slave on the cable itself. But as i said some computers do not use this.

Once you set the jumper and the drive is installed in the computer you should be able to go thru windows explorer and see the drive. Use explorer to copy files off the drive to the HD that was already in the computer. If you cannot then something is wrong with the drive. It sounds like you are getting bad sectors and everytime XP boots it finds and disregards the new bad sectors it finds. Pretty soon the drive will have too many bad sectors and just quit working entirely.

SRX660

[boweasel]

You should have the HD connected to one of the IDE connectors with a cable that has 2 connectors on it. The other IDE connector should have the cdrom drives connected to it. It does not matter what combination of the connections to the IDE connectors are, but you need one of the connectors on the cable open so you can connect the hard drive into the computer.

You've managed to lose me even with this paragraph... I DO have two IDE connectos on the motherboard, and one of them DOES go to the CD ROM drive, and the other DOES go the (good) hard drive in this emachines XP Home PC. Each of those IDE ribbons do have two 25 pin connectors. The only difference in the 2nd connectors is the lack of a notch on the one going to the CD ROM. Are you telling me I should ignore the 2nd connector on the IDE ribbon that goes to the original hard drive? And use the second connector on the ribbon that gores to the CD ROM to hook up the old hard drive?

On some computers( compaq's for example)you must have the drive you install in the computer set as a slave drive. Depending on the make of the drive you set a single jumper to the slave setting on the hard drive itself.
Here for example this is the Western Digital settings for IDE drives.

Notice the top row(for 3.5 inch drives) shows the slave setting as the 2nd pins from the right side. You may have to set the jumper to these pins for it to work in your system.

Since I have a 3.5 inch drive, I hooked the jumper on the recovery HD as in pic 4 on the top line. But I fail to understand the pictures. I have the good HD set up with the jumper going between pins 9/10, because that how it originally was. Should I change the jumper on that HD to 1/2?

Usually WD has no jumpers to use "cable select" for drives.Cable select is nothing more than the end connector is for the master drive and the middle connector is the slave on the cable itself. But as i said some computers do not use this.

No offense, but this sentence could be in another language for all I get from it.

Once you set the jumper and the drive is installed in the computer you should be able to go thru windows explorer and see the drive. Use explorer to copy files off the drive to the HD that was already in the computer. If you cannot then something is wrong with the drive. It sounds like you are getting bad sectors and everytime XP boots it finds and disregards the new bad sectors it finds. Pretty soon the drive will have too many bad sectors and just quit working entirely.

Can't even get there at this point.

[SRX660]

Question 1

It does not matter if you use the cdrom cable or the HD( hard drive) cable. Just hook the drive to the middle connector of on of the cables.

Now you have not stated what make of hard drives you are using. Please tell me what they are( maker and model). Jumpers are different in some makes of HD's.

Question 2

This jumper setting(9&10) is use on maxtor and quantum hard drives. Do you have one of these( or both). Here's the jumper setting for maxtor and quantum drives.

http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=379

Question 3

If you do not have Western Digital(WD) drives disregard this answer.

Question 4

If you have tried using cable select and the drive is not recognized, then tried using the master jumper setting on the computer drive and using the slave jumper setting on the drive you are trying to get the data off , and you still cannot access the drive, the drive has probably died.Either that or something else is causing the computer to not see the drive. Is the drive recognized in the BIOS?( here we go again, EH?)

I cannot read your mind so without you giving information on the computer and what you have done so far. I can only guess the method needed to get you what you want.

SRX660

[boweasel]

Before I answer your questions as best I can, I'd like to inform you that I disconnected the good HD from the newer machine and connected the failed HD, with no jumpers, since that was its original state. I then put an original OEM (Gateway) CD into the CD Rom and booted using the CD. Since it was an OEM disc there was no real repair option, so I went to the recovery console, and rebuilt the Windows\system32\config files from the repair area. I then exited the console and let the PC reboot normally, which it did. I am now transferring files from that PC to a flash drive.

But I would still like to know what I'm doing (or rather did) wrong when I attempted to connect the old drive as a slave. It just seems like that would be easier than everything I did to make the old drive bootable.

Question 1

It does not matter if you use the cdrom cable or the HD( hard drive) cable. Just hook the drive to the middle connector of on of the cables.

Now you have not stated what make of hard drives you are using. Please tell me what they are( maker and model). Jumpers are different in some makes of HD's.

The original PC with the failed HD has a Western Digital drive. That HD never had any jumpers. The newer PC's HD is unknown. I really don't feel like going through the machinations necessary to remove it. But its original (and current) state is with a jumper in pos. 9/10

Question 2

This jumper setting(9&10) is use on maxtor and quantum hard drives. Do you have one of these( or both).

Like I said, failed HD is WD, working HD is unknown with a jumper in pos. 9/10.

Question 3

If you do not have Western Digital(WD) drives disregard this answer.

Question 4

If you have tried using cable select and the drive is not recognized, then tried using the master jumper setting on the computer drive and using the slave jumper setting on the drive you are trying to get the data off , and you still cannot access the drive, the drive has probably died.Either that or something else is causing the computer to not see the drive. Is the drive recognized in the BIOS?( here we go again, EH?)

I cannot read your mind so without you giving information on the computer and what you have done so far. I can only guess the method needed to get you what you want.

SRX660

I appreciate all your help thus far.
I have tried using the master jumper setting on the newer HD and the slave setting on the failed one without success. I'd be inclined to agree with you that the drive has probably died, were it not for the drive being up and running now for about 3.5 hours.