[cecilep61280]

I had to wipe a hard drive for a friend of mine due to numerous issues. I have an XP cd but I want to know if it's ok to install XP on the hard drive through my laptop. The hard drives are the same, but on the computer that is having the issue, the cd/dvd drive is broken so I figured i could put that hard drive into my laptop, load xp and then put it in her laptop. WOuld this cause any issues?

[leroys1000]

Yes,legal licesing issuses using the same disk on 2 computers.
If you have the same type laptop and the restore disk,you could use
the key on their computer.

[Hughv]

You may have problems with the license key, depending on the make/model.
You'll almost certainly have to do a repair install when you switch the drive unless the hardware is identical on both machines.
This has worked for me in the past, but YMMV.

[cecilep61280]

The OS on the one laptop is Vista, but I installed XP on the other drive thru the computer with Vista and i had a bunch of issues and errors come up, so I thought I would erase the drive and try it again, so I wanted to make sure that's not what was causing the errors. I will go ahead and install it again, and report back when I get it up and going. I'm not sure how to do a repair install, so maybe you could walk me through it when I get there?

[cecilep61280]

I may add that I just wiped the hard drive on the acer (XP) and the cd drive does work, it makes a loud noise, but I was able to get the DFT to run on there so I don't see why it wont let me run the XP cd. It's giving me an error saying "Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082) Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation For realtek RTL8139 (X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.13 (020326) PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM." I have it set to read the cdrom first, and it read the drive fitness test cd for hitachi, so I don't understand why it wont read the XP cd on there. Am I missing something?

[cecilep61280]

ok i foudn out i had to disable the LAN in my bios to fix that error, but it's still not reading the cd, but it read the drive fitness test cd so that i could erase the hard drive. I also made sure its readnig from the dvd drive before the hard drive and anything else, is there something I should do differently?