Can i take the master hard drive from a dif. computer, and put it in mine as the master? please read details?

Question

Ok --

My windows xp dell system will not start up because something randomly happened to "hal.dll" -- i get an error when trying to start the computer, it says that hal.dll is missing or corrupt. I have tried those things that are suggested when you google "hal.dll" so please dont try to research for me..
What i want to do, is put the master hard drive with windows xp home for my Other computer into my broken one -- the only problem is, the hard drive for my new computer has a diferent cable that connects to the hard drive -- its not the ribbon cables, its something newer. I do have ribbon cable sockets though, my DVD drive uses one.
Can i plug the hard drive from the old computer with an operating system on it into the ribbon cable socket in my new computer, and have my computer boot from that?

Or will that just be bad because the old computer has lots of diferent hardware that the operating system from the old computer would not know what is going on and stuff. thanks

k people i obviously can't put my new hard drive into the old computer because they connect with diferent cables. i thought i was clear about that..

Answer 1

I had to do that when I burned up my motherboard, I put it in an old socket 7 computer and it runs. slowly but it runs
and I'm able to access my files on the drive

Answer 2

You don't say which system is your old computer so it's diffiult to tell. To give an in depth answer you need to give more details. Anyway, probaby your newer cable to your hard drive is for SATA drives (or SATA II or SATA III), sata has 80 pins while older (E)IDE drives have 40 pins. Read my FULL answer!!!!! Normally I should put another (older drive like yours) in place from the non booting drive and try BUT your new system is a DELL, depending on your service and warrantee you may probably not switch the drives like I suggest but consult at least DELL. Here in West Europe for home users DELL has standard a free next day carry in, repair and you should have your DELL pc soon back, who knows you've a next day technician who repairs at your place... To prevent that you've troubles and are dependable on others you better partition your drive(s), put your operating system on the first (primary) partition and save ALL your data on another partition or another physical drive (you can with some work really put ALL settings etc... on another drive and reinstall windows, after reinstallation you have to tell windows or another OS where he can find the data and you're nearly done). Before you reinstall windows copy the registry in use to your data disk and after reinstallation copy the fresh 'empty' registry also to your data disk so you can switch with the 2 because maybe you want quickly do something without restoring the complete old situation.

The FULL answer for ALL cases is that I write a whole book if it's not yet on the market ;)

Answer 3

J.B. is right on all counts. Try booting from the windows installation CD and doing a repair.

If that doesn't work, install the hard drive in your other computer as a SECOND drive (i.e. don't boot from it) and grab any files that you want saved. Then, put the drive back in your Dell and reinstall the OS.

Answer 4

your hard drive master boot record is corrupt or missing. This is why you are getting that error. You could place that hard drive on my computer and it won't work.

Try to get your windows home installation cd and do a repair. Install the cd in your new pc and let the software fix it and repair your boot files.

Your new pc probably uses serial ATA and not IDE connectors. Basically re install your OS. Other than that. try to Slave your new hard drive to another pc and try to recover your files....then go ahead and reinstalled the os on it.

good luck.

Answer 5

do you have the discs that came with the broken one? if you do you just need to format the drive and reinstall the windows off the disc. that would be the easiest opyion for you, i dought if changing drives will work because the motherboards are different and the drivers will be different

Answer 6

you go with to enter bios to make it locate the newchronic. also in all likelihood get blue demonstrate blunders because the drivers will be incorrect, this will require re-setting up the OS.

Answer 7

it may work but if it has service pack 2 its not going to work,microsoft has taken steps to keep people from doing that.

Answer 8

no. biosync info