Read the first damned post where the OP explained there is a Dell and a HP. These are two different computers. Only one has a broken cpu. The one that is perfectly fine has no recovery disks.Sorry fat, that opener is a bit confusing.

I'm gonna scratch my brain a bit on this one.The HP and the Dell will use two different sets of drivers and won't be compatible.

Will the Dell boot without the HP drive connected? If so then it is probably a matter of the jumpers on the hard disk.I am going to try to take a picture of the part I am referring to. There is a black "frame" for lack of a better word and there are two metal clamps that go over that frame and the HEATSINK and fan mount on top of that with screws- the CPU is on the backside of the heatsink and plugs into a socket on the mother board with the black frame broken I used two zipties to hold it on to the socket attached to the mother board.....it seems like one pin is about half as long now but not all the way broken off and there are a few slightly bent pins....its very hard for me to see this TINY part....this is the CPU Correct??

[attachment deleted by admin]That is the CPU, but if it's damaged you won't get anywhere with it. Are you trying to boot from the other drive or get the defective machine to boot?my goal was to have one working desktop computer out of the two computers without having to buy any expensive parts- its not looking like that is a possability. I was hoping that I could just put the HP hardrive in the Dell (which has a bad partitioned hardrive that I removed) but I should have known it wasnt that easy. I was hoping that they were compatible. OK now where can I buy a cpu with the black frame? Any suggestions for an old part like this its a pentium 4 from my HP Pavilion a465c I am obviously not that computer literate and am trying to fix this with very limited fundsSo the HP has the damaged chip, and the Dell has a drive that won't boot. Is this correct?correct the HP with its shiny new power supply now has a bad cpu due to my error and the dell will not boot the hd that is in it due to partitioningI would write off the HP unless you can FIND a new CPU for it. The Dell will not boot with the HP drive due to driver discrepancies. Do you have any boot disks for the Dell?no boot discs for the dell at all-I got into its hardrive by partitioning the drive and reloading windows with my HP Recovery disks (YES on the Dell) it worked for what I needed to do I had been presented with a blue screen computer and formating was out of the question- didnt want to lose all of his artworks files....just FYI I am self taught so this is a bear for me to figure out when things crash Is there another computer that you can attach the HDD to to recover the images?I handled that issue and moved the images to another computer with a flash drive, I dont have another computer to restore all of my files from the HP. his images were on the dell and I moved them to his two year old HP desktop. With no restore discs for the Dell I cant format the HD but if I did will it still be partitioned? I ask stupid questions I know, but I try not to format hardrives they lose years worth of info.Chances are that if you try the reinstall with the wrong disks that you will destroy the partition.

I would recommend PUTTING the valuable disk into an external USB enclosure and recovering the images that way.