Solve : New system with old hard drive.?

1.	Solve : New system with old hard drive.?
Answer» Greetings! I recently had to rebuild an emachines T2042 system for a friend because the power supply died and took the motherboard with it. My friend WOULD like to keep the original contents of the hard drive, but I am unable to boot from the HD. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. RobWhat sort of ERROR message(s) do you GET? Are you able to access the BIOS of the computer, and if so, see the drive there? Is the master/slave jumper on the drive properly set?The jumper is properly set, and I am able to see the drive in the BIOS, although the BIOS shows it as a Maxtor, but the startup screen shows "IDE Hard Disk". Startup will get to the point where it asks if I want to start in safe mode, normal, etc. Regardless of which option I choose, the blue screen of death will appear for not even one second, and the system reboots. I should have mentioned earlier that the motherboard and processor are completely new. Both were damaged when the power supply died, so they were replaced.Unplug power to the hard drive, and boot. The system should go through POST and attempt to start an operating system. It will tell you, of course, that it can't boot, but I wonder if you get to that point WITHOUT a fatal error / blue screen? You may need to install motherboard / systemboard drivers for the new board which was installed. It may be that Windows is not properly "seeing" the motherboard since the new one was installed. Quote the power supply died and took the motherboard with it Are you sure it didn't take the HDD? This happened to me and the whole lot went poof!!Slave Drive Tutorial NOTE: The HDD does NOT need to be bootable for you to retrieve the data... Good Luck.Alright. So I have a few things I'm going to try. In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to reply. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!!! RobI installed a fresh copy of Windows XP on a spare HDD. Afterwards, I turned off the PC and installed the original HDD in the slave position. All of the data on the original HDD is intact. How do I make the original HDD bootable?Format it and do a clean install of XP...What I am asking is: Is there a way to make the HDD bootable without formatting it? The owner would like to keep the HDD as it was before the PC crashed. Boot disk MAYBE?Get another emachines T2042 to put it in. I'm afraid that will be the only way. The hardware has to be pretty much identical.

Answer»

Greetings!

I recently had to rebuild an emachines T2042 system for a friend because the power supply died and took the motherboard with it. My friend WOULD like to keep the original contents of the hard drive, but I am unable to boot from the HD. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

RobWhat sort of ERROR message(s) do you GET?

Are you able to access the BIOS of the computer, and if so, see the drive there?

Is the master/slave jumper on the drive properly set?The jumper is properly set, and I am able to see the drive in the BIOS, although the BIOS shows it as a Maxtor, but the startup screen shows "IDE Hard Disk". Startup will get to the point where it asks if I want to start in safe mode, normal, etc. Regardless of which option I choose, the blue screen of death will appear for not even one second, and the system reboots.

I should have mentioned earlier that the motherboard and processor are completely new. Both were damaged when the power supply died, so they were replaced.Unplug power to the hard drive, and boot. The system should go through POST and attempt to start an operating system. It will tell you, of course, that it can't boot, but I wonder if you get to that point WITHOUT a fatal error / blue screen?

You may need to install motherboard / systemboard drivers for the new board which was installed. It may be that Windows is not properly "seeing" the motherboard since the new one was installed. Quote

the power supply died and took the motherboard with it

Are you sure it didn't take the HDD?
This happened to me and the whole lot went poof!!Slave Drive Tutorial

NOTE: The HDD does NOT need to be bootable for you to retrieve the data...

Good Luck.Alright. So I have a few things I'm going to try. In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to reply. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!!!

RobI installed a fresh copy of Windows XP on a spare HDD. Afterwards, I turned off the PC and installed the original HDD in the slave position. All of the data on the original HDD is intact. How do I make the original HDD bootable?Format it and do a clean install of XP...What I am asking is: Is there a way to make the HDD bootable without formatting it? The owner would like to keep the HDD as it was before the PC crashed. Boot disk MAYBE?Get another emachines T2042 to put it in. I'm afraid that will be the only way. The hardware has to be pretty much identical.

Solve : New system with old hard drive.?

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