C drive is corrupt, can i add 2nd drive to boot from?

[Joey Coconut]

the C drive on my dell with XP pro caught nasty virus,
cant log onto it.
can i take a hard drive from another pc with XP loaded on it,
and put it in the non working pc and bot from that drive?
anything i should look out for, or do
not sure once i hook it up, what i need to press
f11? etc. to tell the pc to go to the new drive.

any help would greatly appreciated.

J.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Is there some reason that you cannot reinstall Windows on this C: drive?

You can swap hard drives but the XP on the other drive will not likely just
run. You will most likely have to do a repair installation with your XP cd
before it will work. There should be no need to go through all that. Just
use the installation media that came with your computer and reinstall
Windows on the drive already in the machine.

If the XP on the drive on the other machine is an OEM copy you cannot do
this anyway since it is only licensened on the other machine and is not
transferrable.

Without details about your computer and the edition of Windows that you now
have on it no one can say much more.

 

[smlunatick]

the C drive on my dell with XP pro caught nasty virus,
cant log onto it.
can i take a hard drive from another pc with XP loaded on it,
and put it in the non working pc and bot from that drive?
anything i should look out for, or do
not sure once i hook it up, what i need to press
f11? etc. to tell the pc to go to the new drive.

any help would greatly appreciated.

J.

You can not take another installed XP drive. XP has product
activation and will detect the drive in a differnet PC. The reverse
is better. You can take the Dell's drive and place it as a second
drive on a different PC. Then, you can save you files and try to
clear out the virus(es)

 

[Joey Coconut]

i took the bad drive out, and hooked it up
to another pc.
the drive was loaded as new hardware,
but then after re-start,
when i went to explore the drive,
it came up, "drive not formatted do you want to format now"
obviously, i didnt/wouldnt.

the drive is a serial ata drive.
is there some sort of settingon the drive it self,
considering it was my c drive on one computer
to make it a slave for the new one?

thanks again for everyones help.

J.

 

[PD43]

the drive is a serial ata drive.
is there some sort of settingon the drive it self,
considering it was my c drive on one computer
to make it a slave for the new one?

It sure sounds like you're over your head here.

You should probably take the computer to a shop.

 

[Ghostrider]

i took the bad drive out, and hooked it up
to another pc.
the drive was loaded as new hardware,
but then after re-start,
when i went to explore the drive,
it came up, "drive not formatted do you want to format now"
obviously, i didnt/wouldnt.

the drive is a serial ata drive.
is there some sort of settingon the drive it self,
considering it was my c drive on one computer
to make it a slave for the new one?

thanks again for everyones help.

J.

For a SATA drive, there are 2 things to check for. First, are the
SATA drivers installed? And secondly, is the proper SATA header on
the motherboard being used. Many advanced motherboards are supplied
with SATA-RAID connectors and plain SATA connectors. But if unsure
of what one is doing, follow PD43's advice...go to a pro.