Need PC expert - switching hard drive keeping windows..?

Question

I want to switch my hard drives round so that it works with my other computer but when i try to do it i get nothing but a black screen with a flashing line in the top left corner of the screen.. My mother board is M825G V9.2 A or C

M825G V.9.2C - The maxtor 40 gb hard drive i was using with this motherboard was running windows xp (fat32) i am trying to replace that with a hard drive out of a compaq deskpro computer which is maxtor 20gb (ntfs) - whilst keeping windows xp which was running on the compaq deskpro intact i have the hard drive i want to put in it now on this machine running (compaq deskpro) so i can adjust it before moving it over to the m825g but when i put it into the m825g (the one out of the compaq) it does not work.. and the only conclusion i can come to is that this motherboard does not support ntfs?? or does it?? or do i need to install something prior to moving it? or will this not work at all? i do not want to delete windows from the hard drive how can i do this

Answer 1

i do not know if u'r bios has or enabled hard drive auto detection

... but seems u'r bios contains the earlier hard drive & not the current one
hence the error

f2 or del ... whatever at pc boot to start-up

check field for hard drive & ensure correct hard drive is loaded
... guess it should solve issue

Answer 2

You may need to flash the BIOS before it will work. Check jumper settings on the other hard drive to make sure they are correct for primary master settings.

Not sure what the above means by 'live feed', but I know that do not have to re-install (unless you need to reformat the drive into fat32). I have swapped OEM drives before.

*EDIT

BTW, Timothy L is wrong, too. The OS is completely interchangeable, though if the hardware is significantly different there is chance you may have to re-activate - which is not a big issue. However, on older motherboards, the BIOS may not support an NTFS file system - therefore, in that case, the motherboard would be the issue despite what Timothy has claimed. Downloading an update to the BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer and flashing it should allow it to run NTFS file system. If not, you would have to reformat the drive into FAT32.

Answer 3

Supporting Fat32 or NTFS is not a mainboard issue. The issue lies within microsoft. They did not program the operating system to be interchangable with other PC's once installed like Windows 98 could.

Your best bet would be to back up all your information that you want to save off the 20Gig hard drive while the 20gig is in the machine it works on. After that, you can reinstall windows by having your PC boot from the CD-ROM drive. After windows is installed you can copy you backed up information back onto your computer.

I would reccomend using CD Burner, if you do nto have one Pen Drives are pretty cheap nowadays :)

Answer 4

it sounds like you have not made the hard drive the master and on boot up it does not find all the files to load windows and it stalls with the blinking curser on screen. Motherboard runs processes. Type of drive, file systems depends on windows program. .

Answer 5

i don't think it has anything to do with your Mobo. Old compaqs also need modified XPs to run it. Just install a new copy of windows and do a file and settings transfer.

Answer 6

in case your asking to apply the HD interior the workstation, that's quite trouble-free. flow to HD > purposes > Utilities > Disk application. In Disk application, click on the oldcontinual from the laptop and format it under the erase tab to Mac OS prolonged. additionally, a HD is a HD. A HD will paintings in a Mac or laptop as long as that's of the ultimate type (IDE or SATA) and formatted to be study via mentioned working equipment. Seeing your as much as date post, i'd propose buying an exterior HD and formatting it as fat 32. fat 32 is in a position to be study via a MAC and laptop. Ask a chum with a pc to place your HD into his as a slave, replica your records over to the exterior HD, disconnect the ext HD and verify to confirm it is all there with the Mac. as quickly as you're happy which you have each and all of the innovations, take your previous HD from the laptop, deploy it into the Mac and do what I defined above, then replica your documents from the ext HD to the HD. save your records on the exterior HD as a backup. this would sound quite complicated, yet believe me, it is very trouble-free. Switching the HD's backward and forward will absorb approximately 5-10 minutes tops, with lots of the time being taken up via copying the documents backward and forward.

Answer 7

windows xp is a live feed. one of the major design flaws of microsoft...you need to reinstall on each computer..it really stinks...