Boot failure

[Willeatsfood]

I have a Dell Optiplex Gx280 with Windows 7 Ultimate. I recently pulled a Hard drive from a computer with XP on it, and installed it to my Dell. The computer recognizes the new drive. I can access everything from it. But when I try to boot from it I get a "master boot" error. Am I wrong in assuming that I could just install the hard drive and boot up XP so easy?? Please help...

 

[muckshifter]

Am I wrong in assuming that I could just install the hard drive and boot up XP so easy??

Yep.

Any operating system needs to be "installed" on the system so it, or you, can install the appropriate drivers needed.

Why did you changed to a Ford model T when you had an Astin Martin? (Ford own a stake in AM)

 

[Willeatsfood]

Haha I'm a broke gamer. I have 2 video cards each better than my chipset. One is PCI-express, I only have PCI slots. The other has no drivers for windows 7. I wanted to be able to dual boot and play games on XP.

 

[floppybootstomp]

When you install any Windows OS on a machine it will recognise the hardware of that machine and adjust itself accordingly to suit, usually with the aid of drivers but not always.

The result being that when you boot from that hard disk with an OS installed on it in a different machine, it will balk at the hardware it encounters, throw a hissy fit and give you the finger. That is, it won't boot.

Well, most times anyway, sometimes a 'foreign' OS will actually boot in such circumstances but it's rare.

To dual boot in your instance you'd probably have to install XP from a disk to one hard disk then install Win 7 and follow the instructions Win 7 gives for dual booting during install.

You could retrieve the XP activation code from the registry, perhaps, but you're still going to need disks with XP and Win 7 to set up a dual boot system.