i just UPGRADED my whole system and wanted to add my old harddrive to new system to back up files then just junk old drive(old pc would notpower up) but it booted up from the old hard drive(running win 98) instead of new the new one(running xp)
it did a whole bunch of driver updates then rebooted ........now it keeps rebooting and saying it has to reboot with a od error
i then unhooked old drive and tryed to reboot using new drive
but it will not even boot up now it just says ....verifiying files...
i went into bios to change boot order but still not booting up........
anyway i can fix this without reformatting and reinstalling windows
i dont have any original drivers with the pc

any help would be apprieciated
thank youApparently, you had the old drive set as master when you put it in your new system. That's why the system booted from the old drive, and then, of course, updated drivers when Win 98 recognized different hardware.

Did you have your new drive set as slave when you installed your old drive?

Exactly what boot SEQUENCE do you now have set in the BIOS?

I'm not sure I'll be able to help you RESOLVE this, but post back with answers to these questions and, hopefully, someone can help you fix the mess you seem to have created. It sounds like something similar that happened to me...

I was effing around, and then got myself in some poop. (wow, self-censorship eh?)

Anyway,

I took the older drive out, completely and made sure the newer (the XP) drive was set as a master.

Now try to boot off that.

If you're having trouble try repeatedly tapping F8 to get into SAFE Mode just after the BIOS finishes loading Windows, just before that "Windows XP" loading screen.

Hopefully we're laughing.

If not, you'll probably need the XP CD.

If you are laughing, set your older drive as a slave, and add it back into the system, and launch the BOOT MENU (it can be an array of button pushes...watch for it at POST), now boot to your newer (XP) drive.

Still lucky?

If not, grab that CD again...but UNLESS the 98 HDD overwrote anything on the XP HDD, you should be ok.

Let us know, yeah?