Help with HDD swap,

-ADREN-

While I was building my new pc, I needed to take my old hard drive out from my old pc and stick it in the new one. I then went on an installed windows xp on it.

Now that I have my new sata drive working on the new PC, I decided to return the old HDD to the old pc. When I connected it and went to boot, it doesnt boot into windows. I am able to access the F8 option thing, but nothing in there works either, safe mode etc doesnt boot.

Ive tried also to boot from my floppy drive with no success, when I put in the disk and it begins to read it, and then gives me the error "I/O disk error" and doesnt go any further.

Booting from CD doesnt seem to work either.

How the hell am I to get it back working with my old System?

Help very much appriciated.

Thanks,
-Coz.

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

While I was building my new pc, I needed to take my old hard drive out from my old pc and stick it in the new one. I then went on an installed windows xp on it.

Now that I have my new sata drive working on the new PC, I decided to return the old HDD to the old pc. When I connected it and went to boot, it doesnt boot into windows. I am able to access the F8 option thing, but nothing in there works either, safe mode etc doesnt boot.

Ive tried also to boot from my floppy drive with no success, when I put in the disk and it begins to read it, and then gives me the error "I/O disk error" and doesnt go any further.

Booting from CD doesnt seem to work either.

How the hell am I to get it back working with my old System?

Help very much appriciated.

Thanks,
-Coz.

Is your old windows still there definitely?

-ADREN-

The drive originaly had win2000 in it when it was in the old pc. Then when I moved it into the new pc, to get the new pc to boot up, I reinstalled win2000 on it, this got it set up and booting under the new system. Then later on I upgraded the win2000 while in the new machine to windows XP, but now when i put it back into the old PC. it just doesnt boot.

Theres nothing on the drive I need, if formating it would help then that would be ok, but I cant even see a way of formating it.

Also why is my Floppy drive giving me that error.

I swaped the floppy over to the new pc just to make a boot disk for the new comp, then I put it back into the old comp, but surly swaping floppy disk drives between systems shouldnt be a problem. It gives me that I/O error, then I try and run a boot disk in it anyways now that its back in the old pc.

Col_Loki

Boot from the win2000/XP CD and do a fresh install. The drivers are totally different between the old and new tech.

-ADREN-

Col_Loki wrote:

Boot from the win2000/XP CD and do a fresh install. The drivers are totally different between the old and new tech.

My old system doesnt seem to boot from cd when I put in the bootable CDs of either the windows xp or win2000.

Col_Loki

Change the setting in the BIOS, you have to make sure it looks to the CDROM drive as first boot , then hard drive.

-ADREN-

its one of those stupid dell bios's cant change the arrangement of boot options. I think it is before the hard drive anyways.

Anyway of just formating the drive and getting the floppy to work so as i can boot from a win2000 floppy and then install a fresh win2k?

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

its one of those stupid dell bios's cant change the arrangement of boot options. I think it is before the hard drive anyways.

Anyway of just formating the drive and getting the floppy to work so as i can boot from a win2000 floppy and then install a fresh win2k?

Have you got a floppy boot disc to get you into dos? If not you can download one from www.bootdisk.com that should allow you to format the drive and give you a driver for the cd rom.

-ADREN-

Problem is my floppy doesnt seem to be working, it gives a I/O Disk Error, when I enter a boot disk.

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

Problem is my floppy doesnt seem to be working, it gives a I/O Disk Error, when I enter a boot disk.

Is the boot disk definitely working?

-ADREN-

Im pritty sure its any disk that goes in.. it just says I/O disk error... if it wernt even a good bootable disk it woud still say replace and press any key thing..

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

Im pritty sure its any disk that goes in.. it just says I/O disk error... if it wernt even a good bootable disk it woud still say replace and press any key thing..

Might be worth trying another disk though. Have you tried that boot disk in your new pc (probably doesnt have a floppy:)

-ADREN-

yea doesnt have floppy thats y i took the old floopy out of the old comp for the new one. just so i could make a boot disk for my sata pci conroller


Im giong to stick the disk back into the new comp.. boot into windows xp on the new hdd. how would I go about formating the drive from the new comp?

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

yea doesnt have floppy thats y i took the old floopy out of the old comp for the new one. just so i could make a boot disk for my sata pci conroller


Im giong to stick the disk back into the new comp.. boot into windows xp on the new hdd. how would I go about formating the drive from the new comp?

Once you have the old hd in the new pc and it recognises it if you right click on it in my computer you will be given a list of options and one of the options
is format but until you get the floppy working on the old pc you are still going to have an install problem! so rather than going to all that bother of removing the old hd you might be better to concentrate on solving the floppy problem.

Are you sure the dell bios will not let you boot from the cd?

-ADREN-

Yea im sure it wont.. I unplugged the HDD from the old and let it boot.. and it did boot from the winxp cd... but then when it went to install it said no hdd found to install, (yes i did connect it back together the second the cd started to boot)

On the other hand.. it seems those disks might just have been bad and not the drive.. i inserted a blankfloppy and the error I got instead of Disk I/O error was the "Non system disk" one.

So should I get a fdisk boot program is it? then formate the hd onthe old pc, then let if boot and then it should by pass the HDD cus it has nothing on it, and boot from cd?

www.bootdisk.com btw doesnt seem to be working.

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

Yea im sure it wont.. I unplugged the HDD from the old and let it boot.. and it did boot from the winxp cd... but then when it went to install it said no hdd found to install, (yes i did connect it back together the second the cd started to boot)

On the other hand.. it seems those disks might just have been bad and not the drive.. i inserted a blankfloppy and the error I got instead of Disk I/O error was the "Non system disk" one.

So should I get a fdisk boot program is it? then formate the hd onthe old pc, then let if boot and then it should by pass the HDD cus it has nothing on it, and boot from cd?

www.bootdisk.com btw doesnt seem to be working.

AFAIK you cant just connect a hard disc on the fly it would have to be connected on start up. www.bootdisk.com is working for me but even if you get through to it you have no way of making up a new floppy boot disk as your new pc does not have a floppy drive. The problem appears to be the old boot disc so why not ask a friend to download a new boot disk from bootdisk com put your old pc back togther again and try it with the new boot disk?

-ADREN-

no i can get the floppy drive working on the new pc for me... so if I want i can make a Floppy boot disk.

I made one there from putting in a disk and going to format a:\ and creating MS-Dos disk, when i booted it in the old pc, it ran, and went to the a:\ command line.. but I wasnt able to do anything with it. there was no Format command, or if i tried C:\ it came up saying invalid drive etc.

What type of boot disk should I make?

If I made a win XP sp1, would that work?

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

no i can get the floppy drive working on the new pc for me... so if I want i can make a Floppy boot disk.

I made one there from putting in a disk and going to format a:\ and creating MS-Dos disk, when i booted it in the old pc, it ran, and went to the a:\ command line.. but I wasnt able to do anything with it. there was no Format command, or if i tried C:\ it came up saying invalid drive etc.

What type of boot disk should I make?

If I made a win XP sp1, would that work?

For a boot disk (as far as I understand it I am no expert - you need the boot disk to contain drivers and commande that can be used in dos - the fact that you can get the floppy drive in the old one working at least confirms that the old boot disc is the problem. To install windows in your old pc you are going to need a boot disc with a format command on in and a driver for the cdrom otherwise you will not be able to install from the cd rom, Are you absolutely sure that you cannnot get the old pc to boot from the cd rom? that would definitely be the best option I think. Have you adjusted the master/slave on your old hard drive (thats if you had to adjust it to slave in your new pc when you were using it there)

dub45

If you have the floppy working again in your new pc why not try www.bootdisk again and see if you can download one extract it to the floppy and that should have you on your way?

-ADREN-

hey dub45 buddy cheers for the support i think im on my way to installing a fresh Xp install on the old system. I created 6 xp floppy boot disks and they loaded up fine, and its installing (hopefully) as i write this.

Jesus though, as I was putting back in my floppy into the old system, it went crack, and just stoped.. I was like oh for **** sake, ive blow the psu after all this!!

So i took out the mains, and let the MB light go off and prayed to god it would turn on.. and it did that god.

Thanks again for the support dub.

dub45

You are very welcome hope it did work out for you - glad to see that God was on our side as well!

-ADREN-

Yup im glad to.

The old PC is now fully set up again, with winXp. Might have prefered to put on win2k on it since it only has 128ram, but im not complaining, at least the thing is working.

dub45

-ADREN- wrote:

Yup im glad to.

The old PC is now fully set up again, with winXp. Might have prefered to put on win2k on it since it only has 128ram, but im not complaining, at least the thing is working.

Well why not try and get a boot disk and give it a go? What about trying www.bootdisk.com again?