use xp hdd on win98 machine

My XP machine just gave up the ghost - however, the hdd is fine. So, I had the bright (I thought) idea of just putting the hdd on another, unused, machine that I had, boot up and just continue working. Well, it doesn't boot. I changed the BIOS so that at least it recognizes the xp hdd, but when it starts to boot xp, I get a blue screen that flashes by so quickly I have been unable to pause in time to see it, and then the machine reboots.

The old (win98) machine is pretty hefty, 2GHz, so I'm sure it will support XP. I had a suspision that it is because the hdd is NTFS (instead of FAT32 like the Win98 hdd), but when I got the BIOS to recognize it, I thought I was over that hump. Wrong, again.

I have been hunting around to see if this problem has already been answered somewhere. I only found one reference; in it, the writer made reference to changing a strap, but no particulars.

Any help appreciated.

 

The Windows installation is tied to the hardware on the dead computer. It won't work in the other machine. You would have to reinstall XP with the drive in the other machine so the proper drivers are installed and configured and Windows knows what it's working with.

 

If this is an OEM version of XP, its license died with your XP machine.

If this is a retail version of XP, all you need to do is boot from your XP CD and do a repair/reinstall. I prefer this guide.

That will install drivers for the current hardware, and get it to boot. You may have to download and update a driver or two, but you shouldn't have much trouble, and all your applications and files will be just as you last saw them.

 

Thanks for your reply.

juju68 -

Are you certain? The reason I ask is that I have swapped hard drives between machines many times (I used to configure donated machines for a charity to give away to clients), and never had any trouble before. Admittedly, this was years ago, and the machines were primarily win98. I'd plug in the new drive, windows would (normally) update itself and go on its' merry way. Is this an XP "feature"? Does it only prevent swapping between XP and older windows machines, or would the same thing happen if I were to swap between XP machines? Is it because my original XP machine was an OEM (Dell)?

managed -

Can't get to safe mode. I F8 into the list of options, select safe mode, it just reboots. Interestingly, before it reboots, it asks me to select the desired OS, listing only:

MS XP Pro

After I pick it and select safe mode, I get a bunch of lines like:

mult(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

which zip by pretty fast. Using pause, I *think* the last one is:

mult(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\drivers\mup.sys

Interestingly, I get the same thing if I select safe mode with command prompt.

TIA.

 

As I stated in my previous reply, if your XP is OEM, then its license died with the OEM machine. Further help with this issue is a violation of the site's rules.