[wiplala69]

Hello,

My friend's windows XP recently crashed and needed reinstall. I tried to help him at his place but there were some problems with the computer recognizing the winXP cd so I took his HDD to my place where I can install a new XP in my good old computer. I failed.

The problems started when i put the HDD into my computer as a slave. When I turned on the comp. I could not see the HDD in my computer so I restared and that fixed it. Then I formated the HDD and took my HDD out and made his HDD master. But when I tried to install XP, the computer would not recognize the XP cd. When I put my HDD in the boot is found from the cd.
I installed Xp on the slave while my HDD was in too, in hope that later the cd would be recognized but the same thing happened.
Now the BIOS sometimes does not recognize the HDD as a slave altough the jumpers are in correct positisons.

Both are ATA HDDs.
His is Seagate ST380021A
Mine is Western Digital WD800

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Martin

[Advertisements]

Um, installing XP on the hard drive when it's in your machine is doing your friend no favours because unless you have a 100% totally identical machine, that hard drive will not boot on his machine.

You'd have done better to leave the HDD there and return with a spare or external USB.

[Neil Jones]

Um, installing XP on the hard drive when it's in your machine is doing your friend no favours because unless you have a 100% totally identical machine, that hard drive will not boot on his machine.

You'd have done better to leave the HDD there and return with a spare or external USB.

[wiplala69]

Ok, but what about the WinXP cd not being recognized while his HDD is in and
the HDD not shown in BIOS when slave.

[SpywareDr]

I tried to help him at his place but there were some problems with the computer recognizing the winXP cd so I took his HDD to my place where I can install a new XP in my good old computer.

Tip: The Windows installation routine builds a custom HAL (hardware abstraction layer) dependant on the hardware it sees currently installed in the system.