XP not recognised on my HDD

[larrens]

I recently purchased a new 40gb HDD for my PC.

I installed Win XP using a PC with broadband so that I could do all the security updates quickly. (this is not the PC I intend using the hard drive with)
The installation worked fine & booted up correctly on this PC with no problems.

Now, I have since taken the hdd out of the PC I installed the OS with & put it in a similar machine, the one I intend to use it with. This machine has an old HDD with XP installed. I would like to simply get rid of the old hdd & replace it with the new one that has the installation I did on the other PC.

When I do this & get a boot error (invalid OS) & it is as if nothing exists on the new drive. If I put in the XP install CD, it does not recognise the existing installation & wants to proceed with a new installation.

If I use this new drive as “slave” & boot off the old HDD, I can see this new drive in Windows Explorer with the OS I installed on it – so there are no drive errors.

Any idea how I can get the PC to “recognise” the OS on the new drive & boot off it?

 

[Jump1ng]

Windows XP doesn't like being moved from one machine to antoher. I had to do a clean install when I updated my motherboard and changed cpu. XP ties it self in quite deeply with the hardware....

When you installed this hard drive was it the only drive in your machine at the time?

If you boot up with cd and go into the repair console you got a few command available to you like fixmbr fixboot if you run these it might fix the problems.

 

[GrowingHaze]

Bad news; Windows XP checks the hardware it is running with before starting up. If you change just a few things, you won't have a problem, but it sounds like you just swapped the HD. That means that as far as Windows knows, you could have just cloned a freshly installed OS, so to deter pirating, Microsoft made windows XP BSOD or say something to the effect of "bios.oem is missing, please reinstall windows"

I haven't tried to work around this much, so in other words, if I were you I'd reinstall Windows, and bring the whole computer over next time.

-Growing Haze

Gates giveth, Gates taketh away.

 

[ceigl]

WinXP "remembers" a few things on the PC like Mainboard, Network Card, Processor type and I belive even Soundcard.
So, if one of these changes XP will correct this but if all of them have changed....Good luck re-installing

Cheers,
Chris

 

[wolluf]

The problem is probably drivers (the need to reactivate because too many hardware changes won't kick in until the machine gets as far as booting XP) - moving any windows operating system between machines is a lottery as to whether it will work in new machine. You should be able to do a repair reinstall (with just the new drive in the machine), which will probably get it to boot. You'll then probably hit the activation problem, and haveto call MS to explain what you're doing to get a reactivation code.

Basically, you should install XP where its going to be used. (You can download all the updates and burn them to CD)