Swapping hard drives

I recently bought an IBM PIII at auction and I am currently running a DELL PII with Win XP...I tried just swapping the hard drive from the Dell to the IBM but it does not boot up...How can I get the hard drive toi work in the IBM machine?

Thanks for your help and time.

 

Hi and welcome....if you do get it to boot up, you'll be running into hardware and driver issues, as it's going to be looking for the hardware on the Dell machine.

Are you sure you have it set as master and is it connected correctly? Do you get any beeps or anything?

By the way, does the IBM boot up to begin with, with its own hard drive?

 

Did you delete all the drivers on it before installing it in the other machine? This may be what is causing the problem. If you delete them then xp should search for the right drivers. If you can put it back in the old machine and go to device manager and remove them.

Another thought is you may have to reinstall XP as there is a file in there that holds all the hardware info for the computer. Not sure of the file name but it even has the serial number of the cpu from what I understand so a new install may be the only way you can do it.

 

The IBM does boot up with it's original hard drive but I thought I could just swap the drives out thus saving time and aggravation...When I put the hard drive in from the Dell, the IBM PC does begin to boot but then I get a solid blue screen stating that there is a hard drive problem and try using checkdsk/f to correct...Of course I have no way of using that command because the screen just sits there...I really thought I could just swap out the drives and be done with it but apparently not so.

 

Most transplants of W2K/XP to different hardware without a re-install are doomed to failure. This was a lot easier in the W9x series of O/S, I did it all the time. I'd just bite the bullet and reinstall in the new machine, you'll be far better off.

 

So, should I format the IBM hard drive then install XP? How do I get all my Apps and Files over to the new hard drive from the old?

 

Take a look at the following site

http://www.alohabob.com/default.asp

I have used this software several times with great success. If you format IBM and install XP, then you can transfer most (not all) of your programs, settings, files, including registry settings required to run programs. The only requirement is that OS you transfer to is same or later, and that IE is the same version on both.