hard drive wont boot on my other computer.....dell?

Question

ok,
I just bought a pentium 4 dell,
it had 30gb hd in it,
I switched my 80gb from my pentium 3 to the p4,
(80gb = windows xp)
it now wont boot,
I have checked & it is on the 1st ide boot device,
& it is set to master, (& have tried all)

all it does is shows that screen to let me choose between ,safe mode,safe mode in command prompt, & start windows normally & so on...
I have tried all,
it wont boot,
it shows windows xp for a split second then restarts the whole computer,

I have also inserted my boot disket & it starts up fine showing I have 80gb in my partition list....

please help asap!!!

o yea...
I have it set to boot form:
floppy
hard drive
cdrom
lan

but about to change that around to boot from hard drive first just to see...

that also sis not work,,,
still goes to the windows did not start properly!!!!!!!!!!!

.....this is a computer I bought from a friend!.....im not callin' dell,sombody knows somthing!.....best answer please?

thank you mash14...
it worked!
& seemed like the easiest....
thank you again!

Answer 1

ok the problem is your hd is set to boot only on your other pc. you first have to connect it back on your other pc and boot to it. then go to your device manager and change the setting as follows:

really easy. but this only works if the original motherboard and harddrive still work. so put it back together. for newbies, go to control panel, double-click the system icon, go to hardware tab, and click device manager button. find the IDE ATA/ATAPI CONTROLLERS and expand the tab. not the primary or secondary controller, but right-click the first controller. choose update driver. choose the option to install from a list or specific location. click next. now choose the (don't search. I will choose the driver to install) option. click next. now highlight the Standard Dual Channel Pci Ide Controller. click next. the Standard controller will install. now reboot. log in. the standard controller is completely installed. you can now shutdown the computer, remove your harddrive, and it will boot with the new motherboard.

hope this helps you out

Answer 2

What you have just done doesn't work, and now you know why.

The drive you originally had in there will boot up. Put it back the way it was, and put the 80gb drive in as a second drive. You can't take an installed copy of windows that worked on one PC and boot it up on another PC. The drivers are different, for one thing.

If you want to use the 80gb drive that you had on your old computer on your new computer, either leave the 30gb drive in as your boot drive, or reinstall and reactivate a new fresh installation of Windows.

See the link below for a way to attempt a repair of your hard drive if it won't boot, but I doubt it will help in your case.

Answer 3

Hi there. True like the answerer before me, Does it start to load your operating system and then restart? You didn't specify if it was during the boot process when you first turn on your computer or during loading windows. If you just hooked up your hard drive with an existing, running OS like Windows XP into your new motherboard, yeah, Windows won't like it. Better to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows. If it's during the bootup process (when it shows you what hard drives/cdrom drive is hooked up), then you'll have three possiblities: 1) Your hard drive might not be connected/setup correctly to your cable (or to motherboard) 2) Your BIOS settings aren't configured correctly to properly detect your new hard drive. 3) Your motherboard can not handle your old harddrive due to it's old age technology. For 1) Make sure the drive is set at Master or Slave or plugged in properly 2) Make sure that your hard drive is IN the boot device list. (eg. 1)floppy 2)hdd 3)cdrom etc) and it's settings correct (ATA or SATA or SCSI etc) 3)Nothing you can do bout it, but either get an ATA plugin card (PCI or ISA), or buy a new hard drive. Hope this helps

Answer 4

when you switched HD's you might have been a little rough with that 80gb and corrupted some data. try inserting your windows installation disc and do a repair.

but just to make sure that it is your HD put the old one back in see if it starts up. if it does and youve tried everything you can you may have to buy another HD and possible OS.
i just got one for my computer $80 at bestbuy got me 160gb, but tigerdirect.com is a good site for that kind of stuff. (including OS)

Answer 5

You just can't plop in a hard drive already loaded from another machine and hope it will work.

You've got to format your drive and reinstall windows so that it picks up the devices that are on your motherboard (SiS for one).

Answer 6

just call dell and let them help you.