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Install WIN XP on second hard drive

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by lascminn 1 view

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I am new to the hardware world so if this sounds dumb, excuse me. I am trying to install WIN XP on a second hard drive (external) so I can then take the hard drive and put it in a machine that is not letting me do it from itself. Any suggestions on how to go about getting this new hard drive into working condition????

6 replies

by 3xp3rt

When you install Windows XP on one computer, the XP load the drivers needed for that computer (hardware configuration) and could not work on other computer.

by thechas

I cannot think of any XP installation problem that might be resolved by loading XP from an external hard drive.

Usually when I have problems getting XP to install on a system the problem turns out to be bad hardware.

Hard drives, IDE controllers even chip-sets and power supplies with problems can stop XP from installing properly.

You need to diagnose and correct the problems with the system that is giving you problems rather than create new problems.

Please post a question with as much detail as possible of both the target system, and the problem you are having installing XP.
Chances are one of us has had that same problem.

Now, if you suspect the problem is with the optical drive on the target system, you can copy the XP CD to the hard drive, and boot from that drive to install XP.

Chas

by rnadna

I Drag copied the windows XP installer and the screen came up black.
Is there a step that I missed?

by rnadna

I fixed my hardware problem. It seems as thought the Optical drive was bad but now, there is a conflict between the internal optical drive and the laptop hard drive.
I can remove the internal hard drive and get the optical drive to mount the installer and the drive spins up when the optical drive is removed but, when both devices are present neither appear in the system bios settings.

What should I do I need to install XP.

by jausan

It seems that his CD/DVD on the other system is not functioning. In understand his situation in that the Toshiba A205 Lap-top uses SATA drivers and this creates another host of problems. He may come out better creating a bootable partition on the hard drive and another partition with the set-up files on it.

by hal 9000

Unless the hardware is identical you will not get a working computer this way.

I agree with Chas here if you are unable to install XP onto a computer you have one of two problems if it's an older one it or at least some of the hardware might not be XP compatible or you could have faulty Hardware.

To check the hardware download the Ultimate Boot Cd and make a copy and boot from that then run some diagnostics on the computer to see if it's actually working properly. You can download The Ultimate Boot Cd form

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

For XP compatibility check out the following URL

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/depxpapp.mspx

Col

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