2nd hand hard drive with xp pro installed - problem

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shnaek

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I bought a second hand hard drive after the hard drive on my laptop failed. I have the origional win2000 disc I had with the last hard drive, but the 2nd hand drive I bought had xp pro already installed.

I only bought the hard drive at the weekend and I wanted to make sure it was working as soon as possible. So I removed the old drive and installed the new one. The bios recognises it, but the pc stalls on a flashing cursor and goes no further.

I have trawled the net looking for possible solutions but I haven't found any. Has anyone here any ideas? Could it be the BIOS? Or perhaps the low specs on the laptop (192m ram, 366mhz P2)? Or an I missing drivers?

I could reformat the disc and install win 2000 but I want to make sure I can return this drive if it isn't working.

Cheers for the help.
 
Re: 2nd hand hard drive with xp pro insalled - problem

You can't just take a hard disk installed with an OS and install it in another PC unless it's identical to the original and expect it to work (in terms of booting from the OS image - whatever about just using it as additional storage). This is due to low level hardware abstraction and driver software that is tuned to one PC not necessarily working with another. You may be able to do a repair install (by choosing the right option at boot time and using whatever licensed XP installation media you have). However unless the license (i.e. the sticker with the hologram and license key) was transferred to you with this drive then the XP installation is unlicensed. In any case even if you get it going it will probably look for reactivation due to the differences between the hardware it is now running on versus that on which it was originally installed and you will need the license key at that stage.

If you want to simply verify the drive then download the drive manufacturer's low level diagnostic software, create a bootable floppy/CD, boot from it and run it. This will give you a good indication of the drive fitness/health.
 
Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional

•PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
•128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
•1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
•Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
•CD-ROM or DVD drive
•Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

Minimum specs not a problem
 
Cheers for the help. I will go download seagate's diagnostic software and give that a go. I was thinking the hard disc installed OS wouldn't work, but any hard disc I have installed prior to this has been clean so it is not a situation I have come across before.

Assuming the diagnostic shows the disc to be okay, could you foresee any problems insalling win2000 on the hard drive?

Cheers
 
[broken link removed] are pretty good and there's a version that you can run under Windows and another (possibly more thorough) than you can boot from floppy/CD. If you use the bootable CD approach then make sure to burn the ISO image in image mode and not as a file. I find Burnatonce useful for such CD burning. You could always also install the drive as a second drive in your existing PC and run the Windows diagnostics (chkdsk etc.) on it. It doesn't matter that there's an OS installed on it.
 
Cheers for that, Clubman. I downloaded seatools and I'll give it a go tonight.
 
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