[saltydingo]

OK computer geniuses, I need help. Here’s the scoop. My computer fried out. It was a Dell Laptop, about 4 years old, an M700. My hard drive is still good and I REALLY need it. I bought an enclosure and could download files, but a lot of my software will not work on Windows 7 because its 64 bit. Software I spent a lot of money on and now I’m pretty broke. One particular piece is very important to my job and I paid $600 for it….only the designers required phone activation and now they are out of business. So I need this hard drive to work with the OS that it has on it as a boot drive. Can I figure a way to use the enclosure to boot from the USB port? I got an older desktop which ran XP. It is an HP desktop. I removed its 3.5” drive, purchased a 3.5” to 2.5” master ribbon adapter and it starts to boot, recognizes the model of the drive, but then cancels out saying there is an error. Is there a way around that? Will it only work in a Dell PC? Does it need to be a matching model or bios? What are my options here?

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Hi saltydingo

You are asking for a miracle to happen with that drive. When hard drives are installed and a OS is added the drivers for all the components for the original computer/ main board are installed to the drive.
Asking it to boot from another computer with drivers from a previous OS is a difficult task. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
The only thing you can try is a repair install.

How to repair windows XP

[123Runner]

Hi saltydingo

You are asking for a miracle to happen with that drive. When hard drives are installed and a OS is added the drivers for all the components for the original computer/ main board are installed to the drive.
Asking it to boot from another computer with drivers from a previous OS is a difficult task. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
The only thing you can try is a repair install.

How to repair windows XP